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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/adventofempireOOswifrich 


By  MORRISON  I.  SWIFT 


Advent  of  Empire  $i.00 

Imperialism  and  Liberty  $i.50 

A  League  of  Justice  $  .25 

FOR  THESE  BOOKS  ADDRESS 

THE  RONBROKE  PRESS 

L08  ANQELE8,  OAL. 


Advent  of  Empire 


BY 

MORRISON  I.  SWIFT 


LOS  ANGELES,  CAL. 

THE  RONBROKE  PRESS 
1900 


COPYRIGHT  1900,  BY 
MORRISON     I.    SWIFT 


CONTENTS 


1.  The  Gun  is  God. 

2.  The  Path  to  Slavery. 

3.  Imperial  Sam. 

4.  The  Greatest  Thing  is  Love. 

5.  Go  Die  for  the  President  King. 

6.  American  Love. 

7.  Butcher  McKinley. 

8.  Cradle  Magic  of  the  Millionaire. 

9.  Might  and  Right. 

-10.  Imperial  England,  with  Thoughts  on  Imperial 
America. 

^  11.  Anglo-Saxon  Union. 

12.  John  Bullet. 

13.  Possessional   (A  Victorious  Ode). 

14.  The  Cosmopolitan  Business  Man's  Creed. 

15.  Prayer  of  the  Rich. 

16.  The  Free  American  Workingman. 

17.  Equality. 

18.  The  Primitive  Races  Shall  Be  Cultured. 
■^9.  Tweedle  de  Kipling. 

20.  Bulldog  of  Liberty. 

21.  John   Rockefeller. 

22.  The  Brothers. 

23.  I  Am  a  Just  God. 

24.  Rebels. 

25.  Man. 

26.  Tyrants  of  the  Republic. 

27.  Who  Save  the  World. 

28.  The  Workingman's  Opportunity. 

29.  This  Dying  Country. 

30.  McKinley's  Cabinet  Meeting. 

31.  Chains  of  Republican  Empire. 

32  There  is  Still  Health  in  the  Desert. 


Advent  of  Empire 


The  Gun  is  God 

The  God  of  the  world  of  the  haughty  moderns, 
The  holy  Christ  of  atoned  earth's  saints, 
Is  the  ardent  gun  that  belches  killing, 
Exploding  shell  in  a  thousand  brains. 

Love  is  cold  as  the  glacial  ice 
Of  the  ages  that  polished  the  anchored  rocks; 
Heart  is  dead  as  the  plague-marred  corpse, 
Or  mummy  parched  at  the  source  of  Time. 

Hate  is  Lord  of  the  white  man's  virtues. 
Death  the  sceptre  and  crown  thereof; 
Beg  for  life,  ye  weak,  and  listen: 
Swish  of  sword  is  Law  of  Love. 


,     iThe  Path  to  Slavery 

In  this  somber  moment  craven 
We  are  drifting  to  our  fate. 
While  the  seeds  of  ancient  leaven 
Blossom  to  the  glare  of  hate. 
We  who  were  a  noble  nation, 
Born  upon  a  purer  plane 
Than  the  ruffians  of  creation, 
Whom  we  imitate  for  gain! 
Vaunting  wildly  mad  excuses, 
Maniacal  rage  for  war; 
Lifting  high  the  old  abuses 
On  the  clotted  base  of  gore. 
Trade  debauches  with  a  war  force 
That  will  strike  our  freedom  low! 
Harnessing  us  in  a  war  course 
Homeward  sure  to  turn  the  blow! 

For  the  solemn  law  is  written 
On  the  burning  mist  of  time — 
*By  your  hand  you  shall  be  smitten, 
You  shall  die  of  greedy  crime. 
If  you  wed  with  spoliation, 
Consort  with  the  battle  fiend, 
You  will  meet  the  pent  damnation, 
From  your  pinnacle  bemeaned. 
Darling  armies  will  enslave  you, 
Trail  your  liberties  in  dust. 
Cursed  trade  of  war  deprave  you, 
Democratic  virtues  rust.' 

Pause  then  ere  the  curse  is  spoken, 
Bind  the  antic  folly  down: 
Never  freedom  can  be  broken 
Save  by  military  crown. 

8 


Imperial  Sam 

Among  the  powers  that  gem  earth's  ancient  field- 
The  youngest  of  her  mighty  galaxy — 
Far-blazing  in  the  majesty  I  wield, 
Humane,  Imperial,  generous  and  free. 
Behold  me,  all  mankind,  with  startled  awe. 
And  nations  bow  your  sinful  timeworn  knees; 
A  terror  of  my  kind  you  never  saw. 
My  justice  Avills  immaculate  decrees. 

I  whipped  old  Spain  to  make  dear  Cuba  free. 

He  lies  deep  in  his  throat  who  dares  deny  it; 

It's  parcel  of  that  same  humanity 

To  hold  sweet  Cuba  though  the  world  decry  it. 

In  all  I  do  I  act  with  wisdom  deep — 

And  love?    Yes,  love's  a  mighty  motive  with  me— 

To  fools  my  course  may  seem  a  little  steep, 

The  trusty  Cubans  surely  will  forgive  me. 

With  love  and  force  I'll  mix  the  Cubans  up: 
Pooh!     What  care  I  for  any  old  opinion? 
Brute  force  will  make  a  goodly  marriage  cup 
And  authorize  my  conduct  of  dominion. 
Damn  Cuba! — This  I  say  beneath  the  rose — 
Who  cares  a  twiddle  for  the  blasted  nigger? 
Philanthropy's  a  darling  jolly  pose 
But  no  one  means  it  when  he  is  the  bigger. 

9 


I  want  fair  Cuba  for  my  trade,  that's  all; 
And  I've  a  trick  that  fools  the  idiot  people: 
I'll  free  her  sometime,  when  her  sense  grows  tall — 
Your  Uncle  Sam  can  climb  a  greased  steeple. 
But  I'll  take  care  that  time  may  never  come, 
Once  I  have  got  my  throttling  grip  upon  her; 
Then  she  may  squirm  and  bite  and  kick  and  foam. 
Oh,  to  the  devil  with  my  word  of  honor! 

But  if  the  bumptious  fools  at  home  object, 

And  say,  Now  Sam,  this  surely  is  too  brazen! 

My  trick  across  the  ocean  I'll  project, 

My  pious  love  near  China  I'll  emblazon. 

We  do  want  China,  or  our  natural  slice, 

So  we  must  gobble  up  the  Philippines — 

To  love  your  fellow  men  is  very  nice 

When  love  the  dirtiest  conscience  brightly  cleans. 

Now  here's  the  blameless  business  in  a  nutshell: 

The  Filipinos  cannot  creep  themselves — 

Mere  savages  that  screech  and  whoop  and  yell, 

Just  playful  dancing  childish  little  elves — 

Nor  must  we  turn  them  back  to  Spain  the  hidious, 

But  godly  take  them  by  the  chubby  hand — 

That  will  not  seem  to  any  one  invidious — 

Be  their  protector  'till  they  learn  to  stand. 

But  when  we've  boozled  them  to  reverent  bearing. 
We'll  hold  them  'till  the  noon  of  judgment  day; 
Our  navy'll  set  the  whole  of  Europe  swearing, 
Our  army  shall  the  curdling  earth  dismay. 
Awed  by  this  screaming  military  pageant, 
The  moral  sucklings  of  our  commonwealth 
Will  prate  no  more  of  duty  or  'God's  agent,' 
We'll  keep  the  chattels  always,  for  their  health. 

10 


The  Greatest  Thing  is  Love 

Extend,  O  Lord,  a  gracious  share 

Of  thy  divine  perception, 
To  those  besotted  Filipines 

In  wallowing  disaffection. 

Why  are  they  not  ordained  to  see 
The  love  we  dangle  to  them? 

If  they  would  take  the  baited  hook 
I  know  it  would  not  rue  them. 

We  do  not  burn  their  towns  in  hate, 
Nor  starve  their  men  and  women;  — 

It  is  a  tender  form  of  fate, 
The  bonfire  and  the  famine. 

How  sweet  it  is  to  see  the  trail 

Of  civilizing  sorrow! 
How  noble  to  enjoy  the  wail 

Of  those  whose  lands  we  borrow! 

The  goodliest  form  of  good  on  earth 

Is  keenly  hurting  others. 
Putting  the  dagger  in  their  backs 

And  calling  them  our  brothers. 

O  Dewey  bring  the  Tagals  home 
And  bind  them  to  your  chariot, 

A  million  Christians  in  this  land 
Exultingly  will   carry  it. 


11 


Go  Die  for  the  President  King 

A   PATRIOTIC   HYMN 

Our  Self  has  determined  the  savage  to  save, 
Away  to  the  East  with  the  young  and  the  brave! 
There  is  honor  for  them  in  a  Philippine  grave — 
And  in  putting  my  head  in  a  crown. 

It  is  noble  to  die  for  the  soul  of  the  black, 
And  wholly  sublime  his  poor  body  to  hack; 
The  gates  of  eternity  thus  you  will  crack 
For  those  upon  whom  I  may  frown. 

The  saints  and  the  sinners  delightedly  see 
The  deified  mission  imposed  upon  me, 
Ordained  to  conduct  a  terrestrial  spree 
To  saddle  the  white  on  the  brown. 

'Tis  little  I  ask  of  the  world  or  mankind, 
Imperial  rule  over  white  and  black  **jined," 
A  padlock  on  lip  and  a  handcuff  on  mind. 
And  to  pull  all  the  free  people  down. 

O,  mothers,  beloved  of  dead  soldier  boys. 
Who  lift  up  your  cries  with  a  horrible  noise, 
I'll  settle  the  score  and  establish  your  poise, 
By  giving  your  dead  'uns  renown. 

Here's  medal  and  monument,  pension  and  verse, 
Come,  hustle  your  heroes  away  in  a  hearse. 
By  giving  your  sons  you  have  won  a  fat  purse, 
And  your  sorrows  in  glory  may  drown. 


12 


American  Love 

Piety  and  buccaneering 
O'er  the  world  I  go  a  steering, 
I'm  a  pirate  to  perfection — 
Where  the  strong  have  no  objection- 
It  is  my  inheritance, 
Greed  and  Godly  eloquence. 
Get  it  from  the  berserkers 
And  such  other  sort  of  curs. 
Have  the  blue  blood  of  the  Viking, 
Infamous  and  dagger-striking; 
Make  a  black  man  think  I  love  him, 
On  his  bare  back  and  above  him; 
Pick  his  pocket-book  of  gold, 
Bible  at  his  nose  I  hold. 
All  for  Anglo-Saxon  glory 
Am  I  mean  and  dripping  gory — 
Any  low  thing  an  excuse 
For  premeditate  abuse; 
Treachery  political 
Black  as  everlasting  hell. 
What's  the  use  of  a-begrudgin' 
Use  of  rapier  and  bludgeon 
On  the  stubborn  copper  heads 
Of  the  Asiatic  reds? 
Kill  them  out  and  plant  the  Saxon — 
Nuts,  that  Maxim  bullets  cracks  'em. 


13 


Hie  we  to  antipodes 

Missionary  haws  and   hees, 

University  and  college — 

Dead  men  sooner  rot  with  knowledge — 

All  the  world  will  bow  to  God 

When  the  pedagogues  have  jawed. 

We  shall  teach  arithmetic 

With  an  elemental  kick; 

Anguish  just  above  distraction 

Is  the  rule  of  Anglo  fraction; 

Realize  geometry 

To  a  nigger  up  a  tree; 

Fill  with  metaphysic  lore 

Through  the  rifle's  narrow  bore; 

Trigonomic  lines  and  spaces 

Are  the  Military  Graces. 

We  can  teach  anatomy 

To  the  butchered  Tagal  free — 

Why  not  set  a  clinic  up 

At  the  mouth  of  every  Krupp? 

As  for  chemic  analytic, 

Here's  the  modern  way  to  hit  it: 

Take  a  gallon  of  deceit, 

Mix  it  with  a  pound  of  cheat, 

Add  for  salt  hypocrisy, 

Pepper  dark  with  treachery. 

Put  it  in  a  skin  of  love, 

Label  it  "From  God  Above": 

Give  it  to  the  patient  hot, 

Call  the  quack  a  patriot. 

(Any  one  that's  not  a  hater, 

Stone  him  with  the  title  'traitor*; 

Every  opposition  reason 

Gibbet  with  the  name  of  treason.) 


14 


Teach  the  physics  of  the  grave 

To  the  Filipino  slave: 

It  is  well  enough  in  Hades 

For  the  Oriental  babies, 

They  should  know  their  way  to  spell 

Through  the  labyrinths  of  hell. 

With  explanatory  cheek, 

Make  the  children  Btiglish •-squeak: 

That  is  over-compensation 

For  the  stealing  of  a  nation. 

(If  a  man  can  lick  another 

He  may  call  himself  his  brother; 

We  don't  think  an  action  gall 

Where  we've  only  taken  all.) 

Cramming  for  examination 

White  man's  lead  civilization; 

Petrified  and  A  B  C'd, 

Maxim  gunned  and  Ph.  D.'d — 

Spectacles  and  Ph.  D 

Clothe  the  naked  fit  to  see. 

Every  species  of  affliction 

Now  is  healed  by  learned  diction; 

While  we  blow  their  heads  away. 

Knowledge  has  its  perfect  sway; 

Dum  dum  bullets  are  a  rod  *11 

Make  the  little  natives  toddle. 


15 


Butcher  McKinley 

[While  the  Weyler  of  the  Philippines  was  pro- 
ceeding with  the  slaughter  of  their  inhabitants 
he  said  at  a  Boston  dinner:  *'The  evolution  of 
events  which  no  man  could  control  has  brought 
these  problems  upon  us.  Certain  it  is  that  they 
have  not  come  through  any  fault  on  our  own  part, 
but  as  a  high  obligation,  . .  Until  Congress  shall 
direct  otherwise,  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the  Execu- 
tive to  possess  and  hold  the  Philippines,  giving  to 
the  people  thereof  peace  and  order  and  beneficent 
government,  affording  them  every  opportunity  to 
prosecute  their  lawful  pursuits,  encouraging  them 
in  thrift  and  industry,  making  them  feel  and  know 
that  we  are  their  friends,  not  their  enemies,  that 
their  good  is  our  aim,  that  their  welfare  is  our 
welfare,  but  that  neither  their  aspirations  nor  ours 
can  be  realized  until  our  authority  is  acknowl- 
edged and  unquestioned."  He  called  those  present 
to  witness  that  in  what  he  has  done  to  these 
people  we  were  "obeying  a  higher  moral  obliga- 
tion." "We  were  doing  our  duty  by  them  as  God 
gave  us  the  light  to  see  our  duty,  with  the  con- 
sent of  our  own  consciences,  . .  . ."] 

SPEAKS  TO  THE  PEOPLE. 

O  Friends  and  Citizens,  judge  not  my  course 
By  ordinary  law.    I  am  a  man  of  God; 
And  when  I  raise  the  nation's  arm  to  kill, 
God  does  it — high-compelling  destiny. 

16 


Abate  your  fears.     'Tis  noble,  pure  and  right 

To  kill  the  weak  by  God's  ordainment. 

He  does  ordain  it,  through  his  mighty  instrument, 
Myself. 

Sweet  friends,  sweet  fellowmen,  sweet  voters. 

Call  not  murder  murder  if  God  wills. 

'Tis  blasphemy,  abortion,  miscontent,  abomina- 
tion, 

Hell's  own  self,  to  charge  dear  God  with  crime. 

I  must  as  many  Filipinos  kill  as  shall  appease 

God's  wrath  at  them  for  spurning  my  decree. 

They  shall  not  flout  me,  damn  them. 

Me  the  mighty  Me,  backed  as  I  am 

By  all  the  men  of  wealth  in  this  true  land — 

Dear  men  of  wealth!     Good  men  of  wealth! 

Think  you  that  God  could  stand  against  Mark 
Hanna 

If  He  would?  And  all  this  host  of  multimillion- 
aires? 

Sweet  millionaires  disdain  me  not;  believe  me 

That  I  love  you,  and  once  more  elect  me. 

Kind  Sirs,  I'll  gladly  kill  for  you — and  God. 

Believe  me,  God  shall  be  your  tool  by  my  com- 
mand. 

ADDRESSES  GOD. 

I  am  a  pious  man,  a  holy  man,  and  member  of  a 

church. 
Did  I  not  tell  the  damned  blacks 
To  ground  their  arms? 
O  madness  veritable,  they  disobeyed! 
Fiends,  monsters,  toads,   green  lizards,  scorpions, 

snakes, 
And  other  foulnesses  I  think  not  of  just  now — 
Think  you  resistance  possible  toward  me? 

17 


They  must  submit.    For  mean  and  weak  and  black 

There  is  no  virtue  but  submission. 

After  submission, — well,  we'll  see; 

But  there's  no  right  the  weak  can  do, 

If  they  resist  the  strong. 

Resistance  has  no  earthly  name  descriptive: 

It  is  so  putrid,  dank,  disreputably  vile. 

You  plead  for  them? 

Great  God  I  thought  much  better  of  you. 

First  they  obey  me  shall,  obedience  first. 

Though  I  should  have  to  rip  their  bowels  forth, 

Burn  out  their  eyes,  shoot  holes  in  them 

Like  sieves,  tear  off  their  fevered  flesh. 

And  kill  their  viperish  souls. 

It  is  a  law  of  mine 

That  niggers  must  submit  to  my  sublimity 

Before  they  gain  the  earliest  fundamental  right 

To  even  live,  much  less  to  speak  of  what  they  wish. 

Their  wish!     As  if  that  mattered  aught! 

First  they  obey  me  shall,  if  I  kill  every  one. 

Time  there  will  be  for  kindness  when  they're  dead. 

Oh  sin  unnameable.    Conceit  unbearable!  To    dare 

This  opposition!    For  smaller  crimes  some  pardon, 

But  for  this  damnation,  hell,  torment, 

Seething,  roasting  infinite.    I'll  not  be  balked, 

They  shall  be  taught  my  perfect  goodness. 

And  how  I  love  them!     God!     Everyone  that  dies 

In  disobedience  penetrates  my  soul! 

I'll    see   them    later,   look    pityingly   down    from 

heaven 
Upon  their  Hell-scorched  lips — 
For  go  to  hell  they  shall  for  disobedience. 


18 


0  Heavenly  Admiral,  Chief  Gunner  of  the  batteries 

divine, 
They  say  I  am  a  Weyler  in  disguise: 
But  You  believe  it  not?    I  am  content! 

1  only  kill  for  you  (and  millionaires).    Did  Weyler 

that? 

Let's  count  the  dead.  You  count  the  souls,  Old 
Man  Above, 

And  I'll  the  bodies  count — then  we'll  compare. 

They're  only  pin-prick  souls,  they'll  crowd  not 
hell 

Nor  keep  bad  white  men  out  who  later  shall 

Go  down  for  spewing  at  my  will. 

Ten  thousand!  That's  my  count;  a  glorious  show-' 
ing 

For  a  week  of  war.  Still  guide  me,  dear  Re- 
deemer; 

Make  my  subjects  see  my  virtue  and  my  vastiness, 

And  crush  my  enemies.    I'll  send  you  blood 

In  pitchers,  pails,  tanks,  pools, 

Lakes,  oceans,  hemispheres. 

If  you'll  protect  me  and  my  saints  the  millionaires. 

You're  going?    Just  a  word  before  we  part. 
Hush,  only  whispers  now.    I  want  a  thing  to  bor- 
row. 
I'll  give  You  interest  on  the  loan — 
A  church  or  such — perchance  another 
Rockefeller  college,  if  my  John  agrees. 
What  loan?    Why  this— the  Devil. 
Don't  jump,  I  only  want  him  for  Your  good; 
Why  should  the  stain  of  slaughter  be  on  us? 
Let's  use  the  Devil  to  help  on  the  Right 
And  prop  the  kingdom  of  Yourself  on  earth. 


19 


Send  him  across  the  brine  to  cleave  the  skulls 
Of  those  foul  imps  of  mud  the  Filipinos. 
Against  the  grain  to  do  it?    Now  God,  just  listen: 
Knowing  the  saint  I  am  can  you  suppose 
I  would  do  wrong?    And  more,  I've  talked  with 

Hanna. 
He  says  the  Devil's  merely  You  disguised, 
Your  rear  or  nether  side;  that  most  men 
Do  not  understand  Divine  anatomy; 
That  what  the  Devil  does  is  your  performance. 
But  called  the  Devil  for  man's  dull  content. 
You  don't  deny  it?    Then  here's  a  secret  for  you: 
I  also  am  a  little  black  inside. 
It's  fun  to  kill — with  arm  of  law  of  course — 
For  otherwise  some  fellow  might  resent  it  and  kill 

me. 
Law  is  the  keenest  dagger  ere  was  forged! 
Assassination  from  my  easy  White  House  chair 
Across  the  world!     I'm  safe;  no  Filipino  can  sur- 
mount 
The  pale  of  Anglo-Saxon  law. 
With  sleek  black  coat  and  polished  countenance 
And  boots  I  sit  and  pen  decrees  of  murder, 
While  dazzled  men  adore  my  lenient  justice. 

Good-bye,  we'll  chat  again  anon. 

Before  that  time  I'll  send  You  myriads  more  dead 

blacks. 
But  mind  You  don't  forget 
To  order  down  the  Devil. 
He  may  be  needed  here  at  home. 
I  hear  the  People's  stomach  is  about 
To  vomit  up  this  Filipino  blood. 
'Tig  possible  I  went  too  far  at  first. 


20 


But  if  I  did  the  Devil  and  my  brand  new  army 

Will  quite  cure  them.    No  medicine  like  lead — 

For  others.    A  bullet  in  the  sickly  part,  presto, 

The  man  is  cured  and  no  more  moral  spasms. 

When  all  the  better  Tagals  bite  the  sand 

There  are  some  damnable  Americans  shall  bite  it. 

You  say,  look  out?    I  swear  it,  they  shall  die 

For  criticising  me.    My  men  of  capital  ordain 

And  I  obey.    Money  and  Maxim  guns — 

That's  my  maxim.    Good  joke?    A  very  stomach 

full 
Of   joke — for   those   who   set   up     liberty   against 

monopoly. 
Good-bye  again;   ta  ta.    If  I'm  in  trouble  You'll 

help? 
Then  every  bullet  hole  I  make 
Shall  be  in  honor  of  Your  sacred  name. 


21 


Cradle  Magic  of  the  Millionaire 

Why  should  I  not  own  all  the  world? 

There's  nothing  hinders.    With  my  fine  blade,  the 

Trust 
I'll  plunder  common  hinds, 
The  herd,  the  rabble,  the  canaille. 
And  make  them  sullen  vassals. 
HoAV?    There  is  the  friction  point. 
An  army  I  must  have,  and  that  same  vulgar  herd 
Is  set  like  tempered  steel  against  an  army. 

Ha!     We'll  invent  a  war, 

And  paint  it  soft  with  words  like  these — 

Humanity,  Philanthropy,  The  Love  of  God, 

Reward  in  Heaven,  and  Sweet  Improvement 

Of  Some  Sodden  Savagery,  Rescued  from  Foul 

Atrocities — for  we  can  always  find 

Atrocities  at  hand  in  this  game  world — 

Or  make  them. 

There's  Cuba  now,  she'll  do. 

For  Spain  is  like  a  woman  aged, 

With  both  feet  in  the  grave 


22 


How  shall  I  rouse  our  citizens 

And  make  them  hustle  on  the  brutal  sword 

With  which  we'll  slay  themselves? 

The  'upper  class' — sweet  sentiment! — we'll  trick 

With  visions  of  emolument  and  fame. 

Who  of  them  can  withstand  the  potent  witchery 

Of  'General'  beplastered  to  his  name, 

Or  'Colonel'  So-and-So, 

And  trumped  up  deeds  of  valor  wired  home 

By  news  reporters  who  must  earn  their  salt, 

And  thank  their  God  they  have  imaginations? 

The  low  refuse  of  men,  the  stupid  millions, 
Well  bribe  with  pepper'd  couplets  on  the  Flag 
And  patriotic  sewer  gush  about  'their  country.' 
Good  God!     How  could  we  slide  the  populace  to 

hell 
Without  this  patriotic  grease! 
And  yet  it's  funny  that  they're  taken  in  again — 
The  millionth  time  by  measured  count — 
By  the  same  foolery! 

You'd  think  that  kittens  with  unopened  eyes 
Would  smell  the  falsehood  through. 


23 


Might  and  Right 


'Might  is  right,*  proclaimed  the  worldling,  seeking 
cause  to  rob  his  friend. 

So  'twas  ever  since  the  world  began,  'twill  be  so 
till  the  end. 

In  the  struggle  for  existence,  lo  the  weaker  is 
devoured, 

Every  good  thing,  if  it's  weak,  is  relentlessly  de- 
flowered. 

See  the  human  millions  suffer  for  the  glutting  of 

the  few 
Who   are   worthless   to   the   universe   from   every 

point  of  view. 
But  the  secret  of  their  reigning  is  the  fact  that 

they  are  strong. 
In   the   universe   there's    nothing    corresponds   to 

right  and  wrong. 

Prate  about  your  "God  in  heaven,"  interested  in 

the  good, 
'Tis  the  verbiage  of  the  strong  to  keep  the  people 

blocks  of  wood. 
Strange  *'good  God"  on  throne  of  power  looking 

down  upon  the  earth, 
Witnessing  the   gloating  evil   stamping    out    the 

cause  of  worth! 


24 


Imperial  England,  with  Thoughts  on 
Imperial  America 

The  birds  sing  sweetly  in  the  air, 
The  kine  are  basking  in  the  sun, 
The  lives  of  men  serenely  run, 
And  all  the  world  is  good  and  fair. 

The  rook  attains  his  usual  twig 
And  muses,  roosting,  on  events; 
He  knows  the  voluble  portents 
That  what  is  going  on  is  big. 

In  England  thirty  million  pounds 

Are  being  spent  in  jubilee; 

It  is  a  pageant  dear  to  see. 

The  philosophic  rook  sings  "Zounds!" 

Brooding  upon  this  spectacle 
A  thousand  horrors  soon  emerge; 
Beneath   the   glittering  vesture   surge 
The  hideous  counterparts  of  hell. 

Rending  hypocrisy  in  twain, 

The  queen  and  all  that  shining  frolic, 

Pretending  virtue  hyperbolic. 

Are  frauds  for  money  half  insane. 

25 


The  queen  is  only  good  in  seeming, — 
No  parasite  is  ever  good; 
Though  masked  in  virtue's  diamond  hood, 
For  drinking  blood  it's  ever  scheming. 

And  all  these  men  of  noble  mien 
From  the  Lord  Mayor  up  and  down, 
In  essence  every  one's  a  clown, 
"Noble"  as  far  as  he  is  mean. 

For  wealth's  prodigious  beetling  structure 

Only  sycophancy  feeds, 

Never  manly  virtue  'breeds, 

That  would  bring  earth-shaking  rupture. 

Wealth  and  meanness  go  together. 
Pomp  is  flourished  for  deceit, 
Celebrations  are  to  cheat 
The  piteous  people  with  a  feather. 

By  vaunting  up  the  nation's  size 
And  glorifying  deeds  of  blood, 
The  masses  issue  from  the  mud 
And  for  a  moment  cease  their  cries. 

Empire  is  a  word  for  plunder, 
Reapers  are  the  rich  at  home; 
Empire-nations'  common  scum 
Have  their  vitals  fed  on  wonder. 

Empty  stomachs  glorify 

At  the  shameful  jubilees. 

Doing  so  they  sweetly  please 

The  rich  for  whom  they're  made  to  die. 

26 


The  rook  beheld  the  world  of  creatures 
Made  by  devil,  god  and  chance, 
All  mankind  in  grinning  trance 
With  infinitely  ugly  features; 

Warbled  forth  its  heavenly  song, 
Resting  on  its  foot  of  tan, 
"Glad  am  I  I'm  not  a  man. 
Always  fiercely  doing  wrong. 

Fool  at  birth  and  fool  at  dying. 

Fool  throughout  his  worried  lite. 

All  his  sweetness  burned  in  strife 

For  things  not  worth  the  faintest  trying. 

Here's  the  sun  and  stars  and  moon. 
Air  in  meadows  green  and  shaded, 
Here  is  pleasure  for  the  jaded, 
Man  prefers  a  trader's  doom. 

If  mankind  together  strove. 
Doing  all  for  conamon  purpose, 
In  the  world  there  would  be  no  curse, 
Man  would  find  the  treasure-trove." 

Spreading  wings  the  rook  ascended 
Starward  all  the  sable  night, 
Hoping  there  to  find  the  right. 
And  the  reign  of  folly  ended. 

Warbling  through  the  stillness  clear 
Notes  that  only  wild  rooks  know. 
Thoughts  that  true  rooks  never  show, 
Songs  the  earth-born  never  hear. 

27 


Anglo-Saxon  Union 

The  English  made  a  festival  to  canonize  their 
queen, 

'Twas  full  the  rankest  carnival  the  earth  has  ever 
seen; 

The  commons  swelled  and  swaggered  in  the  sun 
of  majesty, 

The  rancid  masses  fain  forgot  their  blown  do- 
mestic sty. 

The  secret  of  the  pageant  was  to  deify  them- 
selves:  

The  several  hundred  thousand  on  the  British  up- 
per shelves; 

The  queen's  a  gilded  figure-head,  of  wooden  inner 
view, 

A  figure-head  for  millionaires,  the  ruling  modern 
crew. 

America  was  proudly  represented  over  there — 
Our  Whitelaw  Reid  and  Johnny  Hay  of  glory  had 

their  share; 
Whitelaw  especially  did  sit  in  mighty  sacred  spots. 
He  ate  with  cunning  little  Wales  and  other  royal 

fops. 

28 


I  hardly  dare  to  write  the  names  of  those  he  sat 

among, 
It  seems  like  letting  out  a  lot  of  greatness  at  the 

bung; 
He   led   Princess   Victoria — the   something   to   the 

queen — 
To    dinner   at   the    Buckingham,    to    lisp    palatial 

cream. 


That  was  an  honor  yawning  big  for  a  democracy, 

But  gloriously  it  served  to  puff  our  Aristocracy; 

The  Bishops  and  the  Board  of  Trade,  the  Lords 
and  noodled  Earls, 

Were  there  with  wives  and  diamonds  and  daugh- 
ters dear  with  pearls 


'Taint  Whitelaw  they  are  honoring,  but  the  toiling 

crowd  of  us. 
For  the  wretched  devils  in  Cherry  street  they're 

making  all  this  fuss. 
It's  the  common  sixty  millions  that  Old  England 

loves  so  well. 
So  well  that  Wales  and  the  millionaires  can  hardly 

how  much  tell. 


How  proud  I  feel  of  my  part  of  the  honoring  we  get 
When  Whitelaw  eats  with  Devonshire  and  Wales 

and  that  bloody  set! 
My   stomach   throbs    of   gastric    sport    with    the 

wine  that  it  doesn't  drink, 
My  mind  is  bewitched  by  the  glorious  light  of  the 

thoughts  that  it  doesn  t  think. 


29 


But  in  less  delirious  moments  when  the  ecstacy 

subsides, 
I  think  how  these  rich  despise  me,  and  of  several 

things  besides — 
How  the   millionaires  of  England,   who   invented 

this  shining  spree, 
And  their  brother  rich   in  America  are  spreeing 

on  you  and  me. 

And  the  light  of  my  dazzled  stomach  sinks  down 
to  a  lower  peg — 

Seen  through  the  eye  of  the  common  herd,  the 
boot's  on  the  other  leg. 

The  world  has  one  ruling  family,  reposing  on  all 
the  thrones. 

Cankered,  degenerate,  half-insane,  selfishness- 
whitened  bones. 

The  rich  of  the  civilized  nations  walk  firm  in  the 

royal  tracks. 
One   mighty   family   of  wealth  enthroned  on  the 

money  sacks; 
One  gang  of  world-topping  adventurers,  royal  and 

rich  combined. 
Handsomely  buccaneering  all  laboring  humankind. 

The  way  these  royal  thrones  live  on's  as  clear  as 

Yankee  jokes: 
The  powerful  new  take  up  the  erne  and  perpetuate 

the  hoax; 
The  rich  attach  themselves  to  thrones  and  prop 

them  up  with  gold, 
The  people  say  this  is  the  way  that  we  were  ruled 

of  old. 

30 


Ruling's  a  pretty  decent  trade,  if  people  tell  the 

truth, 
But  those  who  make  it  pay  the  best  must  learn 

it  in  their  youth. 
Victoria   started   early,    mat's   the   gospel    reason 

she 
Has  laid  a  heap  of  money  up  and  had  a  jubilee. 

But  if  you  would  have  union  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 

race. 
If  you  would  wipe  dishonor  from  the  Anglo-Saxon 

face, 
Abhor  the  king  and  wealthy  man,  and  sweep  them 

from  the  fold, 
Restore  the  common  people  to  the  sceptre  and  the 

gold. 

Otherwise  your  smart  alliance  of  the  robbers  at 

the  top 
Will  be  a  pandemonium  dance  of  devil  and  of  cop; 
The  union  of  the  people  and  extinction  of  the  few 
Will  usher  in  the  end  of  sin  and  blend  the  old  and 

new. 


31 


John  Bullet 


The  Jubilee  is  done  and  Holy  John 

Lays  off  the  irksome  robes  of  pious  peace, 

Takes  on  his  customary  butcher's  garb, 

And  sails  to  Africa  to  quench  his  thirst. 

Great  Britain  is  the  synonym  for  Lie! 

Who  can  describe  the  meanness  of  that  race — 

The  devil  cunning  and  hypocrisy 

Which  celebrates  the  primacy  of  love. 

Extols  the  theme  of  universal  peace, 

Swears  oaths  to  Justice  and  to  Liberty, 

And  in  its  cesspool  soul  plots  strenuous  rape, 

Revolves  like  cud  more  murderous  exploits. 

And  works  its  peaceful  protestations  up 

Into  excuses  to  befoul  the  homes  of  men! 

Accursed  England,  in  its  soul  unfit 

To  be  the  dung  heap  of  the  nether  world. 


32 


Possessional 


A   VICTORIOUS   ODE 

God  of  our  nabobs  lone  and  bold — 
Lord  of  our  Christian  noblemen — 
Beneath  whose  awful  hand  we  hold 
A  rented  right  to  hut  and  fen — 
Lord  God  of  Boasts,  be  with  them  yet 
And  help  them  get — and  help  them  get! 

We  know  Thou  art  of  gentle  heart 
To  those  who  love  Thee  while  they  kill. 
On  hurtling  battle  plain  and  mart 
Inform  us  with  Thy  warlike  skill. 
Dear  Soul  of  Heav'n,  forsake  us  not! 
Till  all  is  got— till  all  is  got! 

If  contrite  prayer  we  lift  to  Thee 
In  votive  honor  for  our  crimes, 
From  scalding  conscience  make  us  free, 
Accept  the  praises  of  our  rhymes. 
Almighty  Ghost,  be  Thou  content, 
If  we  keep  Lent — if  we  keep  Lent! 

33 


The  Czar  invokes  to  holy  peace, 
Disarmament  of  all  mankind:  — 
Eternal  woe!     Are  nations  geese? 
The  tricky  Czar  we'll  trip  behind! 
Quick,  God  of  Bloodshed,  from  Thy  Star 
His  precepts  mar — his  precepts  mar! 

Prime  God  of  swords  and  battle  cries — 
To  Whom  the  dog  Czar  sneaks  a  glance — 
We  want  no  peace  in  earth  or  skies, 
War  is  the  sweetest  circumstance. 
Most  High,  we  adulate  Thy  will — 
To  pray  and  kill — to  pray  and  kill! 

Eternal  one,  Old  England  vows 
Cathedrals  of  majestic  mould. 
Our  haughty  neck  before  Thee  bows, 
Pawn  us  the  planet  for  our  gold. 
We  are  Thy  patron.  Lord  above, 
Pay  for  our  love — pay  for  our  love! 

Send  all  the  world  but  us  to  hell — 
They  are  not  Englishmen,  You  know — 
Thy  mighty  Name  with  trumpet  yell 
Across  the  universe  we'll  blow! 
Most  modest  God,  Oh,  love  us  well— 
For  others  hell— for  others  hell! 

Laureate  Fog-Horn  Amen! 

of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  SKIPLING. 


34 


The  Cosmopolitan  Business  Man's 
Creed 


My  creed  is  simple  you  may  know, 
I  live  in  the  modern  days; 
I  believe  in  the  son  and  holy  ghost 
And  the  father  when  it  pays. 

I  love  my  neighbor  as  myself 
In  church  on  Sundays  rare, 
But  on  the  week-days  of  the  year 
I  fleece  him  all  I  dare. 

When  I  was  just  a  little  boy 
My  conscience  used  to  prick, 
But  now  it  uses  all  its  strength 
To  make  my  rival  sick. 

I  work  the  Church  for  all  it's  worth, 
To  get  a  holy  name; 
It  makes  the  simple  and  the  good 
A  very  easy  game. 

The  ten  commandments  are  a  trick 
To  lariat  the  mob, 
But  all  of  them  a  man  of  brains 
Will  break  without  a  sob. 

To  lie,  Oh  well,  you're  not  a  fool, 
We  lie  in  every  breath; 
And  swear;  you  can't  swear  by  a  god 
That's  paralyzed  to  death. 

35 


To  rob  is  glorious  sport,  you  know, 
The  universal  fun; 
We  do  it  by  commercial  laws 
And  never  use  a  gun. 

The  only  thing  that's  really  smart, 
In  these  unwarlike  days, 
Is  murder  carried  on  by  us 
In  several  hundred  ways. 

We  murder  men  in  factories 

And  on  our  railroad  trains, 

And  when  they  make  a  row  in  towns 

We  batter  out  their  brains. 

Policemen  do  the  actual  work 
Of  opening  their  heads, 
While  we're  at  dinner  in  the  club, 
Or  snoring  on  our  beds. 

Whenever  we  can  get  a  chance 
To  gatling  gun  the  crowd, 
We  have  a  Spanish  holiday 
And  sell  them  all  a  shroud. 

We  like  to  kill  at  stated  times. 
In  millions  two  or  three, 
The  dictionary  name  is  war. 
But  that's  a  josh  you  see. 

It's  just  a  little  way  we  have 
To  clean  the  people  out. 
Whenever  they  too  many  are 
For  us  to  lead  about. 


We  call  a  dinner  party  of 
The  Rich  Men  of  the  world, 
And  order  kings  and  presidents 
To  have  the  flags  unfurled; 

We  fill  the  newspapers  with  noise, 
And  start  a  general  schism, 
And  have  the  pulpits  of  the  land 
Preach  blood  and  patriotism. 

Then  all  the  men  who  are  not  rich 
And  all  of  tender  age 
Go  forth  to  save  their  glorious  land 
From  foes  we  roused  to  rage. 

They  know  not  what  they  fight  about. 
But  then  they  needn't  know. 
They  fight  for  us  that  stay  at  home 
And  never  strike  a  blow. 

And  when  enough  on  each  side  have 
Been  honorably  killed, 
We  tell  our  presidents  and  kings 
To  have  the  battle  stilled. 

To  murder  is  a  joy  to  us 
Because  it  pays  in  cash: 
It  is  the  cheapest  way  we  know 
To  get  around  a  crash. 

It  also  pays  in  coupons  and 
In  bonds  of  every  kind, 
For  we  conduct  the  government 
To  get  our  pockets  lined. 


87 


The  ten  commandments  are  sublime 
For  our  financial  ends; 
To  keep  the  people  good  and  down 
Their  doctrine  ever  tends. 

The  gospel  law  to  us  is  this: 
The  law  of  love  to  break, 
But  every  other  class  of  men 
The  medicine  must  take. 

Our  creed  is  then  to  have  no  creed 
For  which  we  care  a  penny; 
But  to  employ  the  word  of  god 
To  tangle  up  the  many. 


38 


Prayer  of  the  Rich 

Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread, 
And  dividends  paid  up  ahead, 
And  plenty  of  poor  men  in  our  power, 
With  women  and   children  to  devour, 
And  churches  for  the  Sunday  hour, 
Where  we  can  worship  Tnee,  O  Lord, 
And  think  of  heaven  and  our  reward 
For  being  good  in  a  world  of  sin 
And  saving  a  small  amount  of  'tin.' 

Give  us  this  day  our  neighbor's  bread. 

We'll  sell  or  eat  it  in  his  stead. 

Lord,  give  Thyself  no  further  trouble 

About  this  planetary  bubble; 

We  know  its  needs  as  well  as  Thou, 

Devoutly  we  have  studied  how 

To  reap  where  others  weep  and  sow. 

Give  us  our  neighbors'  daily  bread. 

And  pour  the  blessing  on  our  head. 

So  go  Thy  way  and  pleasure  seek. 

We'll  make  it  cheerful  for  the  weak. 


God,  blot  the  poor  out  of  existence, 
They  trouble  us  with  their  insistence. 
You  surely  haven't  got  the  cheek 
To  fill  up  heaven  with  the  meek? 
Just  fancy  how  the  place  would  reek! 
And  if  you  want  US  for  companions. 
Damn  deep  the  miserable  poor  ones. 
Aristocratic  hell  is  better 
Than  heaven  peopled  from  the  gutter. 

Before  you're  off  attend  a  second, 

For  always  on  your  help  we've  reckoned. 

We  ask  for  ministers  to  save  us. 

And  learned  college  profs  to  praise  us; 

The   lawyer's   a   convenient   fellow, 

With  such  an  aptitude  to  bellow 

For  any  cause  with  gold  below. 

Thank  you,  Jehovah,  for  these  boons. 

With  them  we'll  steal  the  poor  man's  spoons; 

And  if  we  meet  a  dangerous  grudge, 

Please  send  us  down  a  supreme  judge. 


40 


The  Free  American  Workingman 


I  live  in  the  grandest  earthly  land, 
Far  from  the  curse  of  kingly  hand, 
Where  men  for  eternal  justice  stand, 
And  I  am  free. 

The  people  of  all  the  earth   combine 
To  create  a  race  of  men  sublime, 
In  the  keen  and  rich  American  clime. 
Where  I  am  free. 

Our  wealth  no  nation  can  surpass. 
Nor  our  brave  aristocratic  class, 
Or  the  people,  a  toiling  mighty  mass, 
All  of  them  free. 

I'm  proud  of  our  glorious  millionaires, 
Greater  than  lordly  foreign  peers. 
For  aught  but  money  with  no  cares, 
Men  truly  free. 

I  have  no  land,  but  only  brawn; 
Often  for  food  my  coat  I  pawn, 
But  I  love  the  place  where  I  belong 
And  am  so  free. 

41 


They  turned  me  out  of  the  work  I  had 
Because  I  voted  as  father  did. 
And  not  as  the  master's  orders  bid, 
I  who  am  free. 

My  wife,  she  died,  but  that's  not  new; 
Factory  women  can't  undo 

Ills  that  have  rotted  them  through  and  through. 
Although  they're  free. 

That  daughter  with  dainty  hands  and  feet — 
You  know  it?    Well,  she's  on  the  street; 
'Twasn't  her  fault — the  times  were  tight; 
Yes,  she  is  free. 

My  bashful  boy  became  a  tramp; 
Odd  lot  for  such  a  little  scamp. 
Too  timid  to  sleep  without  a  lamp, 
And  now  so  free. 

.  Somehow  the  country  isn't  right. 
Everything's  gone  to  the  elite. 
And  the  lot  of  the  many  isn't  sweet. 
Although  it's  free. 

But  I  don't  give  up  to  discontent. 
Calamity  men  can't  prevent. 
For  the  most  of  them  it's  precedent, 
Even  when  free. 

And  it's  right  enough  that  we  should  toil 
And  grub  our  crumbs  from  borrowed  soil. 
And  try  hard  nature's  hate  to  foil, 
If  we  are  free. 


42 


And  right  for  the  rich  man  to  have  all, 
To  live  in  ravishing  palace  hall, 
While  we  drink  bitterness  and  gall, 
If  we  are  free. 

I  wouldn't  complain  of  such  a  lot. 
For  it  doesn't  help  a  visible  jot; 
The  few  have  always  owned  the  pot. 
Of  work  scot  free. 

Nor  you  mustn't  find  fault  with  the  universe. 
For  it  only  makes  a  sad  thing  worse, 
And  brings  upon  you  the  bitter  curse 
Of  all  the  free. 

So  sit  you  down  in  a  quiet  spot. 

And  brood  on  the  grand  things  now  forgot. 

And  let  the  good  things  in  you  rot, 

So  do  the  free. 

When  we  haven't  anything  else  to  be, 
And  life  is  a  surfeit  of  misery. 
Then  death  relieves  our  penury, — 
Forever  free. 


43 


Equality 

Two  little  men  in  a  red  ripe  world 

Determined  to  fight  one  day; 
One  was  a  workingman,  trouble-soiled, 

The  other  a  rich  man  gay. 

''Before  we  fight,"  said  the  capitalist, 

"Everything  fair  must  be. 
I'll  tie  your  ankles  and  bind  your  fist, 

And  then  you  will  equal  me." 

An  injunction  he  put  on  the  workman's  arm, 

A  policeman  on  either  leg; 
To  prevent  him  from  doing  any  harm, 

He  sewed  him  up  in  a  bag. 

"Now,"  said  the  rich  man,  "let's  be  fair; 

Be  square,  be  fair,  I  say; 
I  believe  in  the  efiicacy  of  prayer— 

To  begin  with,  let  us  pray." 

While  the  poor  man  closed  his  eyes  in  prayer, 

And  bowed  his  trusting  head. 
The  rich  man  laid  a  legal  snare 

And  removed  adjacent  bread. 


44 


"Now  then,"  he  cried,  as  he  danced  on  air, 
"The  rules  of  the  fight  are  these: 

Strike  here,  strike  there,  strike  everywhere. 
And  strike  as  hard  as  you  please." 

He  kept  himself  at  a  distance  safe, 

And  hurled  starvation  rocks, 
In  hand  he  held  the  militia  stafC 

To  administer  crisis  knocks. 

The  fight  was  awful,  as  you  may  judge; 

Blood  flowed  in  a  gurgling  stream. 
"I  swear  I'm  brave,  and  I'll  never  budge!'* 

Was  the  rich  man's  battle  scream. 

The  workman  was  soon  a  ghastly  sight. 
And  the  rich  man  stormed  in  glee: 

"By  Jove!     The  I.ord  fights  with  the  right, 
In  a  land  of  equality." 


45 


The  Primitive  Races  Shall  Be 
Cultured 


Softly,  a  cultured  one  approaches, 

Muflle  your  tones; 
No  highly  polished  man  encroaches 

On  rugged  zones. 

You'll  plunge  the  gentleman  in  spasms 

If  you  imply 
That  there  are  any  social  chasms 

So  very  nigh. 

Don't  talk  of  hunger  revolution 

Within  his  sphere. 
It  is  a  vulgar  proposition 

For  him  to  hear. 

Soups   mixed   with   social  tittle-tattle 

Are  better  themes, 
Slum  clubs  to  teach  the  hungry  prattle 

And  culture  dreams. 

*A  sometime  half-hour  with  the  waif-rakes 

Indeed  I  prize; 
Such  leisure  consecrate  to  their  sakes 

Diversifies.' 


If  between  books  and  social  honey 

Charity  peeps, 
He  gracefully  dispenses  money 

And  nearly  weeps. 

He  can  discourse  consummate  wisdom 

On  rules   of  good, 
And  prove  that  you  must  never  use  them 

Although    you    sh,ould. 

He'll  qualify  your  deepest  insight 

With  mists  of  thought. 
Show  triumphs  over  might  by  right 

Are  dearly  bought. 

He  wants  to  vegetate  serenely 

In  sweetness  light. 
Efforts  to  hasten  knows  he  keenly 

Are  never  right. 

Tell  him  the  world  is  nearly  perfect 

And  he'll  agree — 
Say  there's  a  sweet  transcendent  object 

In  cruelty. 

This  is  the  kind  of  sips  and  surfeits 

That  he  enjoys; 
The  owl  philosophy  of  comfits 

Which  he  employs. 

Now  for  the  sake  of  cosmic  culture 

Progress  must  stop, 
And  life  become  a  white-sepulture 

Politeness  prop. 

47 


Tweedle  de  Kipling 

I  writes  of  war  and  'eroes,  bless  me  eyes! 
See  me  counthry  tackle  people  of  its  size! 

From  the  grapple  of  the  ape 

Never  shall  the  Boer  escape 
While  me  pen  with  bloody  inspiration  flies. 

Have  ye  heerd  the  tender  poem  that's  me  last? 
Tis  a  mimic  of  the  Day  of  Judgment  blast; 

Hittin'  at  the  nasty  Boers, 

Which  is  patriotic  sure's 
I  repents  me  who  the  Widder  Windsor  sassed. 

Gather  round  me  Tommy  Atkins  and  the  girls 
Yez  hev  ruined  in  yer  canvassin'  fer  pearls; 

Ye'r  a  fancy  specimen 

Of  the  genus  Englishmen, 
Just  the  bloomin'  beef  to  slaughter  in  the  Kraals. 

Have  ye  said  yer  thanks  to  God,  ye  shootin*  bum- 
mer? 

All  the  churches  is  a  praisin'  ye  with  mummer; 
And  the  queen,  God  bless  her  liver, 
May  her  smile  the  whole  earth  kiver, 

Or  me  light  go  out  ez  literary  hummer. 


48 


Bulldog  of  Liberty 


Swooning  Gods!  can  this  vicious  old  England  im- 
agine 

Herself  the  defender  of  Liberty's  shrine? 
Believes  she  the  fable,  lie-scented  and  laughing, 

That  she  is  the  breeder  of  Freedom  divine? 

No   such  light  delusion  fleet  skips    through    her 
fancy, 

A  friendless  confusion  she  fondles  in  vain. 
On  her  bed  lies  the  world  for  benign  vivisection, 

She  thinks  with  .a  lie  to  relieve  it  of  pain. 

For  pain,  to  the  Children  of  Time,  is  their  money. 
Bereft  of  it  all  would  in  happiness  be; 

So  quaintly  she  saves  them  by  taking  it  saintly- 
Vicarious  redeemer  is  certainly  she. 


49 


John  Rockefeller 


WRITTEN  BY  THE  CHICAGO  UNIVERSITY 

Than  whom  the  ruddiest  rays  of  romping  sun 
Less  brightly  'radiate  this  happy  land, 
My  benefactor  with  Olympic  hand, 
Out-leaping  nature.  Thou  Supremest  One! 
All-potent  author  of  my  Lights  and  towers, 
Whose  fecund  Word  creates  strange  dividends 
Like  Eve,  not  for  lascivious  private  ends 
But  to  embellish  these  moral  college  bowers: 
Without  thee.  Patron,  had  my  fearsome  life 
Choked  early  out  in  stainless  poverty; 
Superbly  has  thy  consecrated  strife 
Cajoled  thy  country  by  adorning  me. 
Do  what  thou  wilt,  with  Trust,  or  bribe,  or  knife, 
I'll  garland  thee.  Thy  University. 


50 


The  Brothers 

Two  brothers  started  in  this  world  as  twins; 
Alack,  the  one  through  copious  crimes  and  sins 
Grew  rich;  the  other  honest  staid  and  poor, 
And  in  his  brother's  rich  eyes  was  a  boor. 

Never  a  copper  did  he  once  receive. 
Although  his  need  was  sore  with  no  reprieve; 
Like  that  poor  nephew  of  the  modern  Sage, 
Who  mortgaged  a  lean  farm  in  his  old  age. 

But  speculation  walks  on  treacherous  ice. 
And  countless  wealth  goes  under  in  a  trice; 
Our  twin  awoke,  one  morning,  penniless, 
Scarce  twenty  thousand  dollars  left  to  bless. 

He  raved  and  swore  and  broke  his  heart  and  died, 
That  such  dire  poverty  did  him  betide. 
How  could  he  creep  through  his  declining  years, 
Stung  by  old  friendship's  diabolic  sneers? 


51 


The  paltry  twenty  thousand  went  to  him 
Whose  want  had  ever  bubbled  o'er  the  brim, 
And  filled  him  with  such  drastic  ecstacy 
That  his  insides  a  cauldron  came  to  be. 

The  rivets  of  his  being  fell  apart, 
And  he  expired  of  frenzied  happy  heart. 
Into  one  grave  they  tumbled  poor  and  rich, 
The  scientific  gods  knew  which  was  which. 

One  thing  alone  to  common  man  was  clear: 
That  money  prematurely  loads  the  bier; 
It  cracks  the  brain  of  men  before  their  time, 
And  starts  them  forth  on  their  celestial  climb. 

I  would  that  all  who  money  love  so  much 
Might  crack,   and  heavenward  speed    upon    that 

crutch- 
Letting  the  world  be  peopled  by  the  rest. 
Who  think  that  glowing  life,  of  all's  the  best. 


52 


I  Am  a  Just  God 

In  Africa  there  loomed  a  cloud 
The  size  of  an  infant's  hand. 

It  grew  in  wrath  and  breathed  aloud 
It's  justified  demand. 

All-ruling  God  omnipotent, 
Whom  heavenly  hosts  invoke, 

In  thunder  tones  the  spaces  rent, 
In  thunder  sternly  spoke: 

*My  voice  peals  from  the  infinite, 

It  calls  from  the  unseen; 
The  free  are  holy  in  my  sight, 
I  trample  low  the  mean. 

'By  million-shafted  power  opprest. 

Begirt  by  venomed  hate, 
Still  lies  my  awful  arm  in  rest 
The  right  to  vindicate. 

'My  justice  guides  the  bellowing  storm 

And  conjures  it  for  good, 
My  love  enfolds  the  meanest  worm. 
And  destines  brotherhood.' 


63 


The  night  was  black,  the  cannon  roared, 
And  the  beacon  lights  went  out. 

Where  now  is  the  hand  of  the  mighty  Lord, 
Our  serried  foe  to  rout? 

The  desert  answered  to  the  sea. 

The  rocks  gave  back  their  thought — 
*Ah,  deep  eternal  mystery, 
The  Lord  availeth  naught. 

'In  boasting  Bible  he  contends 

In  poesy's  sweet  sound, 
On  flute  and  harp  for  noble  ends. 
But  wards  no  living  wound. 

*No  trumpet  with  exulting  strains, 
Nor  lightning,  cleaves  the  sky, 
The  hand  of  Providence  remains 
In  eminence  on  high.' 

In  Afric's  desert  dark  and  cold 

Lay  Freedom  on  the  sand: 
The  God  of  Promise,  as  of  old. 

Had  vanished  from  the  land. 

Then  trouble  not  the  gloom  with  prayer 

Said  unavailingly, 
But  strike  with  fury,  scorning  care. 

Die  unbewailingly. 


54 


Rebels 

[Written  on  the  adoption  by  sub-Sovereign  Otis 
of  the  policy  of  court-martialing  and  shooting  Fili- 
pino patriots  as  traitors  to  their  American  mother- 
country.  It  will  be  decreed  that  guerilla  fighters 
are  murderers.] 

Death,  death,  to  the  Philippine  foe! 

Heed  not,  hear  not,  their  cries  of  woe! 
Rebel  sires  shall  be  mown  low, 

Sons  their  blood  in  base  grave  sow. 

Hold,  Lord,  the  Orient  Isles! 

Magical   craft   and   soldiers'   wiles, 
Through  fever  swamp  and  hell's  defiles. 

Black  night  of  pestilential  trials! 

Thousands  dead  and  charred  their  homes. 

Maniac  devastation  roams. 
Red  guerilla  warfare  gloams. 

Hate  infernal  livid  foams. 


55 


Suicide  stalks  throughout  the  camp, 
Infinite  fire  of  fever  cramp; 

Death  moves  by  with  evil  tramp, 
Peace  no  Godhead  can  revamp. 

Madness  storms  the  soldiers'  brain. 
Fiends  and  fury,  leaden  rain! 

Life's  last  agonizing  strain 
Fades  in  lunacy's  refrain. 

Brand  the  patriots,  have  them  shot! 

Treason,  murder,  guerilla  plot! 
Toss  them  in  courtmartial  pot! 

Hangman's  halter  and  let  them  rot! 


56 


Man 


O  give  me  a  day  on  the  wide  sea  beach, 

A  day  in  the  woodland  deep, 
Where  the  cruel  roar  of  civilized  man 

Is  lulled  for  the  time  to  sleep. 

O  let  me  sail  from  the  land  away, 

Away  in   the   infinite   night, 
To  gather  breath  in  the  peace  beyond. 

In  the  foaming  storm  of  flight. 

Word  shot  back  from  the  Isle  Despair, 

Shot  back  with  raving  wail, 
Sail  to  the  West,  sail  to  the  East, 

Your  fiery  search  will  fail. 

For  ever  above  the  beautiful  boom 

Of  nature's  wild  health  note 
Re-echoes  the  growl  of  a  chosen  doom 

From  the  savage  human  throat. 


57 


Tyrants  of  the  Republic 

Are  there  no  tyrants  in  a  land  republican  in  name? 
No  foes  of  human  liberty  accursed,  unashamed? 
We  have  them  that  abash  the  Turk  in  cruelty  and 

greed; 
Uncrowned,  but  with  eavenomed  dirk  they  ravish 

human  need. 

The  man  that  holds  a  nation's  wealth  in  bound 
monopoly. 

That  man's  remorseless  emperor,  king  absolute  is 
he. 

Old  kings  are  held  by  silent  chains  in  aged  cus- 
tom wrought, 

But  the  Lord  of  Concentrated  Wealth  pays  fealty 
to  naught. 

No  conflict  of  the  centuries  has  sheared  his  wax- 
ing power, 

He  is,  through  error  of  the  gods.  Liberty's  highest 
flower; 

He  governs  with  the  fiction  rod  of  equal  human 
rights. 

The  right  to  take  his  brother's  all  and  kill  him  if 
he  fights. 


58 


*We  were  not  born  of  heavenly  gods,  divinely 
charged  to  rule, 

But  are  the  simple  mould  and  clay  of  wise  man 
and  of  fool. 

If  we  then  mount  the  clouds  and  grind  our  coun- 
trymen to  chaff. 

They  shall  in  ashes  bow  their  heads  with  thank- 
fulness and  laugh. 

*If  each  man  has  a  right  to  earn  the  planet    for 

his  own, 
There  obviously  is  no  wrong  to  those  who  miss 

the  boon; 
Their  duty,  having  lost  the  game,  is  meekly  to  sit 

down 
And  be  the  footstool  of  the  few  who    won    the 

wandering  crown. 

'To  cry  injustice  on  the  heads  of    those    whose 

lucky  toil 
Secures  dominion  of  the  earth  as  fair  commercial 

spoil. 
Is  quite   beneath  the  chivalry  of  men  who  give 

and  take. 
E'en  tho    the  'give'  turns  out  to  be  a  leaded-dice 

mistake. 


59 


'It  would  be  right  to  punish  us  if  we  were  named 

The  King, 
But   since   we    are   just   *citizen'    the    slaves   our 

praises  sing: 
"Behold  our  mighty  ones!"  they  cry,  in  amorous 

ecstacy, 
"Let  them  abide,  by  Fortune's  grace    the    lucky 

had  been  we!"  ' 

To  this  our  free  Republic  the  tyrant  has  returned, 

Blacker,  meaner,  more  desperate  than  him  of  old 
we  spurned. 

Tear  down  this  tyrant  from  the  height  he  has  at- 
tained in  crime, 

There  shall  be  freedom  here  again,  again  be  right 
sublime. 


60 


Who  Save  the  World 

Two  peoples  war  today  for  human  worth, 

While  near  twelve  hundred  million  mouthers  are 

Detoning  periods  on  the  sneering  air. 

Of  Freedom  stretching  past  the  planet's  girth: 

High-nurtured  heroes  in  the  spirit-waste, 

The  Boers,  majestic,  solemn,   eminent,  free. 

Withstanding  England  at  Thermopylae, — 

And  Luzon  warriors  fighting  this  disgraced 

Republic,  contaminate  tomb  of  Liberty, 

Where  God-born  principles  have  been  effaced. 

Grand  is  the  page  of  Holland  in  the  bright 

Immortal  portaiture  of  tyrants'  flight! 

Protect  us,  Luzon  sable  sons  of  youth, 

Who  bring  through  death  triumphancy  for  truth. 


61 


The  Workingman's  Opportunity 

The  workingman  who  heretofore  has  cringed, 
The  mockery  and  sorrow  of  mankind, 
A  Caliban  with  partial  human  mind 
And  every  right  and  attribute  infringed. 
In  primal  being  from  the  world  uptorn — 
Holds  now  the  chance  of  ages  in  his  hand. 
Holds  by  the  throat  the  tyrants  that  have  damned. 
The  infamous  crew  that  have  the  purple  worn. 
He  can  throw  down  the  buttressed  robber  clan 
That  has  assailed  the  righteous  Philippines, 
Crush  under  that  rapacious  type  of  man 
On  which  the  coward  president  falsely  leans. 
United  Labor  rushing  to  the  van 
Can  save  itself  and  this  vile  nation  cleanse. 


62 


This  Dying  Country 

When  I  behold  the  country  that  I  love 

Fast  to  the  death-grip  of  the  millionaire, 

Whose  savagery  conceives  no  checks  or  bounds, 

I  marvel  at  the  fabric  of  my  race. 

Our  freedom,  offspring  of  a  thousand  years, 

Is  tamely  rendered  up  to  please  the  brutes; 

The  multitude  bewail  with  jaws  agape, 

Deeds   they   could   throttle   down   with   one   swift 

blow; 
Their  resolution  is  enchained  by  fears 
That  shame  the  courage  of  a  little  child. 

And  to  this  crime  the  good  are  partisan. 
For  they  with  ethic  cowardly  and  cheap — 
Morality  pretentious  but  unreal — 
Cry  'hush'  to  every  keen  unscabbard'd  word, 
And  'speak,  good  sir,  with  mildness,  for  effect; 
Abstention  cultivate,  and  on  the  granite 
Feelings  of  the  steel-cased  rich  walk  softly; 


63 


) 


Attack  their  fortress  with  a  bow  and  arrow, 
The  gentle  politicians  with  tin  horns. 
They  mean  well;  truth  without  a  coat  is  vile, 
Like  human  flesh  audaciously  unclothed. 
It's  better  far  to  keep  the  truth  at  home 
Than  let  it  roam  and  rampage  in  its  shirt.* 

So  speak  'the  good'  with  wily  wise  intent 

To  risk  no  business  bones  of  their's  in  wrestle 

With  dangerous  foes,  th'  embattled  millionaires. 

Politeness  sweet  is  worth  a  roll  of  gold, 

A  place,  a  dinner  party,  or  a  vote, 

To  throw  away  which  for  the  country's  sake 

Is  folly,  crude,  unripe,  pernicious,  insolent. 


There  once  were  men  enamored  so  of  truth 
They  told  it  like  th'  uncringing  cannon  ball 
Which  speeds  its  course  without  polite  deflection; 
Enamored  so  of  high  sweet  liberty 
They  cut  their  tyrants  down  with  words  of  steel. 
With  our  dwarfed  souls  we  cannot     touch    their 
knees. 

That  lusty  virile  generation  dead. 

We  in  their  places  stalk  like  tonsured  ghosts, 

Discharged  from  universal  obligation. 

Be  courteous  to  your  lynchman,  is  our  law, 

To  the  highwayman  shooting  out  our  brains, — 

A  courtesy  that  spreads  us  in  the  grave 

And  deeds  our  traitored  country  to  the  fiends. 


64 


And  yet  there  may  be  living  iron  ore 
In  rocks  uncultured  by  the  acid  world. 
There  may  be  souls  today  in  embryo 
Of  such  titanic  size  and  fashioning 
That  the  frail  tissues  of  deformed  words, 
Enchaining  principles  with  temperate  smirks, 
Will  fall  before  their  impendin":  scornful  strokes. 
And  this  great  world,  enslaved     to     forms     and 

sounds, 
Burst  free  and  tread  its  orbit  in  the  real. 


65 


McKinley's  Cabinet  Meeting 

With  haggard  eyes  our  solons  rack 

Their  brains:     Gage,  Alger,  Smith,  Long,  Mack, 

That  Smith,  the  tyrant  of  the  mails, 

Who  robs  the  post  and  pamphlets  steals, 

Our  little  country  to  protect 

From  Aguinaldo's  fierce  elect. 

The  awful  Griggs,  the  rhyme  of  pigs, 

For  liberty  cares  not  two  figs; 

He  says  he'll  hang  the  horrid  devil 

That  helps  the  Filipino  rebel. 

John  Long  who  propagates  our  ships. 

Flounders  in  millions  to  his  hips; 

The  people  pay  a  pretty  bill 

To  eat  the  bitter  fruit  of  hell. 

But  after  Mack  the  greatest  quack 

Is  Alger,  curse  the  day  alack. 

When  that  poor  toadlet  of  the  war 

Drank  gore  and  made  the  people  pour 

Their  lives  upon  his  smelling  altar — 

Whose  neck  should  now  be  in  a  halter. 

But  Mack  insists  he's  pure  and  good. 

And  Eagan,  too,  and  that  canned  food, 

And  would  not  let  his  Algy  go 

To  save  the  land  from  war  and  woe. 


66 


For  Mack  would  cut  the  nation's  throat 
To  get  a  presidency  vote. 
Among  these  sages  is  John  Hay, 
Who  followed  one  named  Billy  Day. 
These  fellows  gather  in  a  meeting, 
They  bow  and  smirk  the  country  greeting. 

MACK. 

Wise  men,  from  every  part  selected, 

If  I  can  be  again  elected, 

I  promise  you  fat  pay  and  office. 

Influence,  consequence  and  soft  place. 

Help  me  out  of  this  horrible  muddle, 

Cuban  and  Filipino  puddle. 

I  thought  I  would  have  a  walk-away, 

Banners,  dances,  jigs  and  play. 

With  the  pigmies  over  the  briny  way, 

Who  show  fiends'  fighting  to  stay, 

And  pinch  my  ankles,  legs  and  thighs. 

As  if  they  were  somewhere  near  my  size — 

I  thought  I  was  fighting  a  little  cock. 

But  I  seem  to  have  struck  a  living  rock. 

Now  this  won't  do,  I  must  eschew 

Such  cruelty  and  cry  and  hue. 

Or  my  vexed  people  will  repent, 

Resent  and  on  me  anger  vent. 

And  kick  me  to  oblivion's  murk 

Where  I  shouldn't  be  able  to  breathe  or  smirk, 

Having  stood  on  the  world's  high  pinnacle 

And  seemed  to  be  vast  and  Inimical 

To  the  rights  of  a  few  little  copper  ants 

Whose  manners  are  such  they  don't  wear  pants. 


67 


But  they'll  put  me  out  of  the  presidency, 

For  the  dumb  and  the  blind  begin  to  see 

That  I  made  this  war  for  my  renown— 

In  which  I  confess  I  was  a  clown. 

Just  think!  "McKinley,  Emperor 

Of  America,  Cuba  and  Asier!" 

Lord  Peter!     If  I  could  get  that  title 

I'd  do  any  cursed  thing  that  might'U 

Accomplish  within  the  brief  sad  span 

A  term  in  the  White  House  gives  a  man! 

I'd  make  a  dozen  peoples  slaves, 

I'd  fill  a  million  million  graves. 

Ha!   Ha!   I've  filled  up  several  now. 

Some  soldiers  have  gone  to  the  Old  Bowwow! 

But  Napoleon  One  killed  more  than  I; 

I  weep  to  think  he  climbed  so  high 

And  leaves  me  straddling  on  the  wind 

With  the  reputation  of  having  sinned. 

But   damn! — Excuse,   I'm   a  Methodist, 

Yet  I  can't  endure  the  popular  fist 

Which  cuffs  and  buffets  my  noble  cheek 

Until  with  the  wrath  of  hell  I  reek. 

I'd  like  the  American  throat  to  cut. 

That  makes  me  a  spectacle  and  butt — 

But  I  see  I  wander,  my  mind  grows  dim, 

I've  lost  my  spunk  and  hope  and  vim 

Since,  aspiring  to  be  a  Napoleon. 

I  feel  and  am  mis'rably  sat  upon 

By  the  scum  of  the  earth  whom  I  despise 

But  must  cater  to  to  get  the  prize. 

O  God!  Was  it  you  that  set  this  trap 

And  made  me  dreaim  to  enlarge  the  ndap? 

'    ^8 


I  thought  it  would  help  the  Methodist  Church, 

But  you  seem  to  have  left  me  in  the  lurch. 

I  wander  again;  is  my  whole  mind  gone 

Since  I  put  my  principles  in  pawn? 

I  think  I  ha,d  some  once,  eh,  Hay? 

A  poet  like  you  says  what  he  may. 

But  henchmen,  followers,  vassals  true. 

Throw  me  a  straw  in  this  hot  stew, 

Pull  me  ashore  from  this  sea  of  gore; 

Of  Imperialism,  hush,  no  more. 

If  I  only  knew  where  I  was  at, 

And  didn't  feel  like  a  drowning  rat! 

Griggs,  you're  a  lawyer,  what  are  you  for 

If  in  this  hades  you  can't  do  more 

Than  call  men  traitors  and  stop  the  mails, 

You  and  Smith  there? — and  if  that  fails 

My  goose  is  cooked  and  I  am  booked 

For  derision  cunningly  barbed  and  hooked. 

Speak  up,  if  you  would  an  emperor  make  me, 

Out  of  this  lethargy  retake  me. 

Chancellors  of  my  coming  Court, 

Fix  me  a  dose  of  shrewd  retort 

For  the  drabs  who  talk  of  the  Constitution, 

And  Liberty  in  dissolution. 

ALGER. 

Most  noble  master,  I've  a  plaster 

A  woman  can  use  when  one  has  sassed  her. 

Ex ,  pardon,  a  woman  you're  not,  I  know. 

But  the  leering  country  will  have  it  so. 
I^et  pass,  for  it  certainly  doesn't  matter, 
If  you  get  whatever  is  on  the  platter. 


09 


My  plan  is  this:  provoke  more  wars, 

Stir  up  the  Cuban  till  he  roars, 

Don't  lick  the  Philippines  in  a  hurry. 

But  go  it  slow  and  let  the  war  worry 

Our  anti-warriors  till  they  yield 

A  standing  army  and  naval  shield, 

With  which  you  can  smash  their  liberties 

And  Philippine  freedom  coolly  freeze. 

An  empire  needs  an  army  of  size. 

Then  mortified  freedom  droops  and  dies. 

Mckinley. 

Brave  Alger,   you  have   spoken   well. 
It  shall  be  done,  I'll  crack  the  knell 
Of  every  American  institution 
With  an  army  bloated  for  revolution. 
Now  Smith,  they  say  you've  got  a  brain. 
Show  that  it  isn't  yet  distrain. 

SMITH. 
Your  Majesty,  I've  a  little  plan 
Becoming  the  mind  of  a  little  man. 
It's  simple  but  drastic,  Sire,  you  know 
To  the  root  of  the  trouble  I'll  go  below. 
Put  shackles  on  the  Anti  press. 
Arrest,  and  make  their  dough  a  mess. 

McKINLEY. 
My  mind  approves,  I'll  name  you  lord 
Of  several  counties  for  your  word. 
Lord  Smith,  or  Lord  what  shall  it  be? 
Prepare  to  arrest  for  lese  me. 
Who's  next?    You  Griggs?    Come  to  the  scratch; 
You  must  lay  an  infernal  egg  to  hatch. 

GRIGGS. 
I'll  do  it.  Serene  and  Excellent, 
Or  of  my  birthday  will  repent. 


70 


I'll  go  one  better  than  Emory  Smith, 

My  scheme  possesses  a  nasty  pith; 

Would  dub  each  anti-expansionist 

A  traitor,  and  on  his  criminal  wrist 

Handcuffs  would  lock,  his  tongue  to  block; 

Would  eradicate  the  ghastly  flock 

Of  treason-breeders  and  talkers  glib. 

Who  poke  the  galleries  in  the  rib 

And  tell  them  to  mind  their  ps  and  qs 

Or  all  possessions  you  will  fuse 

Into  your  slick  imperial  crown, 

Over  the  corpses  you  have  sown. 

Treason's  the  word  to  fling  broadcast, 

Hang  up  the  traitors  to  the  mast. 

Put  them  in  prison,  hiss  and  shoot. 

Dig  them  out  by  the  trunk  and  root! 

Never  a  man  who  thinks  his  thought 

Shall  live  in  the  empire  you  have  wrought. 

Don't  fear,  dear  Caesar,  strike  them  quick, 

Hound  them  to  death  with  shaft  and  prick; 

Then  you  will  ride  a  placid  realm. 

Which  you  will  steer  with  a  gatling  helm. 

McKINLEY. 
Duke  Griggs,  you're  a  creature  of  solid  gold, 
Born  of  the  fiends  in  sheol  bold. 
Herewith  I  do  Your  Grace  empower 
To  make  the  dogs  my  enemies  cower. 
Lynch  them,  torture  them,  hunt  them  down, 
Under  the  cover  of  legal  gown; 
Throttle  the  press,  garrote  the  book. 
Gibbet  the  speaker  that  dares  to  look 
Sidewise  at  my  doings,  and  you  I'll  give 
A  State  for  your  dukedom  to  help  you  live. 


71 


GRIGGS. 
(Bowing  his  head  on  the  cabinet  carpet.) 
Worshipful,  vast,  adorable  Chief, 
Your's  be  the  glory  of  my  fief. 

Mckinley. 

(With  growing  confidence.) 
Ho,  Hay,  and  what  have  you  to  offer? 
There  must  be  coin  in  your  mind's  coffer. 

HAY. 
Huge   symbol   of   Divinity, 
Majestic  shoot  of  eternity. 
Sprung  from  the  gods  by  gods  sustained, 
Back  to  the  gods  sometime  to  wend, 
A  god  yourself  in  attribute, 
Immortal  essence  of  the  loot — 

McKINLEY    (interrupting). 

I  name  you  poet  laureate, 
Ride  with  me  the  wings  of  Fate, 
Sing  my  deeds  when  I  repose. 
Lie   about  my   crimes   and   woes. 

HAY. 
I  will,  sweet  Sovereign,  Sun  and  Light, 
Your  goodness  locks  my  conscience  tight. 
But  now  my  plan,  a  statesman  s  word 
Attend,  and  act  when  you  have  heard. 
If  worst  runs  on  the  heels  of  worst 
In  this  exalted  drama  curst. 
This  avalanchal  escapade, 
Where  flirting  fortune  is  a  jade, 
And  all  the  winds  of  azure  heaven 
Play  devil  with  the  magic  seven — 


72 


Mckinley. 

John,  as  a  poet  I  respect  you, 
But  this  imperial  fever  and  ague 
Has  loosed  the  staples  of  my  mind, 
And  to  your  thought  meseems  I'm  blind. 

HAY. 
Pardon  poetry  pragmatic, 
I  spoke  in  riddles  diplomatic. 
I've  been  to  England  do  remember, 
And  came  home  only  last  December. 
Plain,  uncultured  prose  to  speak, 
Slap  some  Power  on  the  cheek. 
Have  another  war  with  Europe: 
That'll  make  the  Yankees  whoop  up 
Battleships  and  fine  battalions 
By  the  ten  or  twenty  millions; 
They'll  forget  in  half  a  jiffy 
That  they  were  a  little  miffy 
When  you  baked  the  Eastern  pie, 
That  they  heaved  a  gentle  sigh 
Of  reproach  and  contumely. 
With  their  conscience  vain  and  steely 
They'll  go  mad  and  patriotic, 
War  will  make  them  idiotic; 
Proof  of  this  our  Spanish  tussle, 
Which  created  such  a  bustle 
And  upset  the  nation's  heart 
Like  a  corner  apple-cart. 

McKINLEY  (beaming). 
Good  John,  your  words  pontifical 
Lift  from  my  mind  the  fatal  spell 
Of  fear  and  feeble  hesitation 


At  courting  ruin  for  the  nation. 
Unloose  the  war-dogs  and  the  blast 
Of  rumbling  cannon  through  the  planet: 
By  this  tremendous  ruse  I'll  plan  it 
To  pass  this  mighty  nation's  checks  in, 
Or  make  myself  its  mighty  re:x  in. 
Place  of  Republican  hollow  forms, 
Already  gnawed  by  trusts  and  worms, 
I'll  stake  the  country's  worthless  life 
To  get  a  crown  for  me  and  wife; 
I'll  stir  my  people  up  to  crush  a 
Foe  like  Germany  or  Russia; 
About  a  million  well-armed  men 
Will  be  our  private  army  then, 
And  I  the  lord  and  chief  despotic 
Over  America  neurotic. 

(McKinley  pauses.  A  cloud  comes  over  his  face. 
He  stands  with  head  bent  looking  fiercely  at  the 
floor  in  the  attitude  used  by  Napoleon  in  such 
cases.) 

JOHN  LONG  (timidly). 
Hath  some  uncouth  rebellious  phantom 
Challenged  Your  Highness  like  a  bantam?   - 

Mckinley. 

'Tis  this:  I  knov/  not  how  to  ravish 

The  people  to  a  war  so  lavish. 

They'll  fight  a  little  paltry  power 

Like  Spain  or  Aggie  any  hour. 

But  Russia's  quite  a  different  nation 

To  tackle   without  provocation. 

My  people  certainly'l  object, 

For  fear  they  may  get  shortly  licked. 


74 


We  must  a  trick  and  trap  combine 
To  bring  their  folly  into  line. 
I  see  none,  that  I  will  admit; 
And  if  you  can't  I'll  have  a  fit. 

(All  are  silent  and  a  heavy  gloom  settles  down 
on  the  cabinet.) 

McKlNLBY  (brightening  suddenly). 
Ha!  Singular  I  never  thought  on't 
To  have  the  mighty  Hanna  brought  on't! 
Run  Griggs  or  Smith,  whiche'er's  the  fleetest, 
Summon  our  Warwick  him  that  beatest. 
HANNA. 

(Enters,  followed  by  Smith  and  Griggs  out  of 
breath.     Speaks.) 

I'm  called  here  to  disperse  distraction, 
Being  a  man  of  brain  and  action. 
The  trouble  will  I  quickly  settle 
With  double  use  of  leaden  metal. 
We  must  create  some  labor  mobs 
To  give  the  military  jobs; 
The  cords  of  labor  bind  on  tighter 
To  make  the  workingman  a  fighter. 
In  every  quarter  of  the  land 
I'll  agitate  the  bloody  hand: 
Riots  will  make  the  timid  howl 
And  cry  for  an  army  with  a  growl. 
I  know  the  way,  for  medal  and  pay 
The  soldier  will  shoot  his  friends  all  day — 
Particularly  the  working  man, 
Who  worships  the  god,  a  dinner-can. 
Better  than  foreign  war  by  far 
Is  a  bloody  domestic  labor  jar. 


75 


Mckinley  (aside). 

(This  godless  creature  would  be  king; 
Must  put  his  bull  neck  in  a  ring.) 
(Aloud,  to  Hanna.) 
Salt  of  my  soul,  henceforth  shalt  own 
Each  workingman  and  stock  and  stone 
Within  the  cosmos  of  the  bullets 
Warmed  up  for  their  digestive  gullets. 

(Ceases  speaking,  is  ill  at  ease,  rubs  his  hands 
and  cracks  his  fingers  to  escape  Hanna's  magnetic 
eye.  A  cold  sweat  dampens  his  fabrics.  Sees  Root 
and  blurts  out:) 

Now  there  comes  Root,  a  little  coot, 
Disposed  to  make  the  Tagal  scoot. 
I  like  the  name  of  Blihu, 
It  runs  so  well  with  hack  and  hew. 
Now,  Elly,  give  us  your  advice, 
With  smokeless  powder  as  a  spice. 

ROOT. 
Great  diner  out  and  eater  in. 
Your  maw  shall  have  the  Philippine; 
I  promise  fifty  darkey  legs 
As  tender,  young  as  soft  poached  eggs; 
Your  murky  brain  shall  have  a  tonic, 
Our  butcher  shop  is  economic — 
A  carcass  comes  in  every  minute, 
I'll  set  my  office  clerks  to  skin  it. 
I  see  your  gastronomic  fervor 
Is  called  a  liberty  preserver; 
It  eats  a  bushel  big  of  livers 
W^hereat  the  Constitution  shivers. 


To  consecrate  your  roasting  volleys 

And 

McKINLEY   (black  and  blue). 
You  seem  to  say  I  am  a  glutton 
Exceeding  fond  of  Eastern  mutton. 
If  you  propose  your  job  to  keep, 
You'd  better  think  such  things  asleep. 
This  studio  air  is  getting  rancid, 
Root's  not  the  fellow  that  I  fancied. 

ROOT. 
Oh  hear  me  out,  Benignant  Purple, 
I'll  make  the  Christian  Mausers  hurtle. 

McKINLEY. 
This  cabinet  council  I  adjourn, 
All  words  of  rosy  promise  spurn. 
Who  brings  me  Aguinaldo's  head — 
Convincing  proof  that  he  is  dead — 
Is  heir  apparent  to  my  crown, 
Till  Hanna  bids  me  haul  him  down. 


77 


Chains  of  Republican  Empire 

A  century  ago 

Men  thought  of  kings  as  children's  government, 

Irrevocably  barred  from  modern  shores; 

Safe  plays  for  sickly  nobles,  cranium  bent, 

Infatuate  generals,  filtered  breeds  of  bores. 

That  we  should  contemplate  a  king, 

The  half  our  manhood  bartering. 

Backward  in  time  the  new  world  fling. 

Hushing  the  song  that  free  men  sing, 

No  child  of  this  swelling  continent 

Could  have  believed,  could  have  achieved. 

Nor  does  the  mass  accept  it  now, 

'Tis  but  the  rich  man's  vulgar  vow. 

Made  audibly, 

To  yoke  us  like  the  ploughman's  cow. 

To  drive  us  on  through  time  and  space 

Like  peasants  on  Italian  soil, 

Like  peasants  robbed  of  soul  and  soil, 

The  homeless  shadows  of  the  place 

They  once  possessed,  they  once  caressed. 

And  with  obtuseness  rivaling  the  dead 

We  strap  the  yoke  upon  our  bovine  head. 


78 


A  hundred  years  of  uncrowned  government 
Are  but  as  yesterday  within  the  span 
Whereon  the  struggle  of  the  captive  man 
To  unthrone  kings,  worn,  ages-spent, 
Records  his  groveling  since  time  began. 
And  his  success,  so  mean,  so  tentative, 
So  late  fulfilled,  in  poor  imperative. 
Upon  the  liquorish  putty  of  his  mind 
Makes  no  more  memory  than  wings  on  air, 
And  he  remains  as  apish,  ancient,  blind, 
As  his  arboreal  ancestors. 
Too  young  to  care. 

Empire  is  still  our  natural  state, 

As  screams  and  creeping  to  the  child, 

As  prey  to  beast  famished  and  wild — 

And  this  is  what  we  mean  by  Fate. 

But  children  grow,  and  some  have  crossed  the  line 

Where  screams  and  kings  seem  natural  and  fine; 

Yet  most  grown  men  are  balanced  on  the  fence, 

Ev'n  less  discerning  whither  than  whence. 

The  gift  of  freedom  handed  them 

By  generations  lost  in  night, 

Is  like  the  wealth  of  gilded  wight, 

An  everlasting  diadem 

That  reckless  hand  cannot  exhaust. 

That  even  by  fools  cannot  be  lost. 

They  fancy  this. 

*Is  not  our  freedom  fixed  and  firm?* 

They  ask,  with  laughter  loose  and  free; 

'Is  not  in  us  the  only  germ 

Of  sacred,  self-made  liberty?' 


79 


No,  for  in  will  you  are  infirm, 

You  yield  and  give,  you  do  not  see 

That  presidents  may  still  be  kings 

Through  forms  once  held  in  infamy. 

Forms  are  as  thongs  which  bind  the  ruler  down. 

But  neither  form  nor  thong, 

How  beautiful  or  strong. 

Acts  of  itself  unguidedly 

In  automatic  stead  of  brain  and  brawn; 

And  we  have  lost  our  pristine  enmity  for  wrong 

And  idly  hope  the  thongs  will  work  and  walk, 

Doing  their  duty  while  we  lag  and  talk. 

We  learned  our  thoughts  on  human  rule 
From  bandit  empires  far  amain; 
From    England^    stain    incarnadine 
On  even  Europe's  bloody  sheen. 
Where  unobstructed  customs  reign 
The  ancient  birth  of  slave  and  fool. 
.  And  if  the  people  least  relax 
Their  fiery  care  of  right  and  law, 
These  forms  subserve  the  tyrant's  role. 
And  what  of  right  and  justice  lacks 
For  gaining  of  th'  imperial  goal. 
He  takes  from  legal  form  and  haw, 
In  name  alone  republican. 

We  never  contemplated  wealth 
Transferred  from  all  to  several, 
We  never  dreamed  a  nation's  health 
Could  long  survive  this  wily  ill. 
To  the  low  frozen  social  state, 
The  barren  soil  of  brutes  and  kings, 
We  now  return  degenerate, 

80 


A  nation  sunk  to  underlings. 

On  people  dead  to  solemn  rights, 

To  what  is  theirs  through  force  of  toil, 

The  curse  of  slavery  re-alights 

And  dying  kingship  will  recoil. 

Imagine  not  in  broad  contempt  of  truth 

That  we  above  senility  are  raised, 

Emblazoning  the  muscle-marks  of  youth 

To  prove  our  mental  strength  is  rightly  praised. 

For  in  the  land  we  brag  above  the  skies, 

Enraptured  that  it  is  of  chiseled  rock. 

There  grows  and  grows  a  lower  human  breed, 

That  beastlier  form  of  impure  human  stock. 

Which  in  all  lands  seems  destined  still  to  rise 

And  cloud  the  dawning  sun  on  heaven's  face — 

Which  to  the  wise  is  this  enchanted  globe 

Whenever  the  curse  of  dominant  brute  is  laid — 

Just  at  the  moment  when  the  riper  grace 

Of  those  who  love  and  think  would  rend  the  robe 

And  show  us  to  ourselves,  and  show  this  ball 

Unfrocked  of  those,  half  man,  half  animal. 

Whose  not  yet  human  hopes,  to  power  and  wealth 

confined. 
Absorb  insatiably  the  human  all. 

This  semi-type  of  brute, 

The  wealth-devourers  of  our  race. 

The  sateless  gourmands  of  the  meek 

And  inarticulate  denizens 

Of  envied  unowned  space, 

A-tremble  for  the  good  they  seek 

In  piping  timid  orisons. 


81 


Lest  by  the  rude  and  undersized 

It  be  contemptuously  despised; 

The  dispossessed  of  confidence 

In  even  fheir  right  to  common  sense; 

Quaking  the  while  they  pray  to  God, 

Knowing  that  prayer  is  whispered  fraud 

While  all  innate  capacities 

Of  earth  and  nature,  force  and  skies. 

Belong  by  right  of  pen  and  sword. 

Of  vapory  antiquated  word. 

Of  parchment,  law  and  constitution, 

Crime  and  swifter  absolution, 

Church,  morality  and  science. 

Song  and  teaching  and  self-reliance, 

To  those  but  one-half  man, — 

This  type  of  semi-brutes 

Stands   stubborn   guardian   of   the   blood-drenched 

past, 
Its  deadly  grip  on  further  progress  fast, 
In  all  things  all-omnipotent 
Because  its  shrewd  possession  of 
The  springs  from  v/hich  life  flows. 
The  wealth  in  Wxiich  life  rose 
To  that  degree  of  leisured  thought. 
To  that  possession  of  repose 
Which  gave  the  soul  its  impetus. 
Which  raised  it  from  the  fear  and  fuss 
Of  vanquishing  unsleeping  foes 
To  gain  a  modicum  of  food, 
Beyond  it  to  conceive  of  naught, — 
Remands  the  comelier  of  mankind. 
Those  more  indubitably  man, 
Back  to  the  state  from  which  they  came, 

82 


The  bitter  struggle  without  vent, 

The  search  for  simple  nourishment, 

The  sad  imbruting  prison  game 

Of  lifting  stones  through  life's  whole  span. 

*Tis  here  we  meet  the  mystery 

With  fearful  miracle  replete, 

Th'  illusion  in  the  comelier  kind, 

The  lie  they  never  have  divined, 

The  lie  that  life's  fair  heritage 

And  increment  from  every  age, 

May  be  detained  in  privacy 

And  garnered  everlastingly 

By  those  with  rudimental  soul. 

Incapable  to  know  the  whole 

Of  the  grand  scheme  of  human  things, 

In  which  man's  sphered  life  gladly  sings, 

When  what  is  sacredly  its  own 

Is  not  in  profligacy  sown 

By  robber  fools  with  heart  of  stone. 


83 


There  is  Still  Health  in  the 
Desert 


Why  do  these  singular  Boers  humiliate 
England's  crack  general . -sports  and  liveried  nobs, 
Buller,  Gatacre,  Kitchener,  and,  er,  **Bobs," 
Forests  of  British  soldiers,  tons  in  weight 
Of  golden  British  lubricating  pounds. 
Convoyed  in  stately  fleets  by  Justice  steered, 
And  a  God  and  a  half,  as  conscience-ballast,  feared? 

II. 
England,  the  cowboy  of  the  East  and  West, 
In  whiskey  soaked  and  sottish  in  its  gold, 
With  dirk  and  pistol  in  its  boots  and  vest. 
And  bullion  nose  both  prominent  and  bold. 
Rides  blusteringly  to  make  a  general  round  up 
Of  human  cattle  in  its  annual  pound  up. 

With  one  eye  gone,  sans  teeth,  and  minus  crest, 
It  hobbles  disenchanted  from  the  ground  up. 

III. 
Tell  us  the  cause,  ye  stars,  ye  gods,  ye  Boers, 
Of  this  amazed  confounding  circumstance, 
Where  snorting  snobs  perform  the  pistol-dance 
Beneath  the  calm  eye  of  the  timely  boors. 

It's  worth  a  lifelong  perigrination 

To  learn  the  spell  of  this  merry  thin  nation. 

84 


IV. 

About  three  centuries  ago  or  so, 

Miss  England  made  a  bargain  with  the  Devil. 

Her  soul  was  then  not  large  enough  to  go 

About  unchaperoned  by  saint  or  imp  ill. 

Being  by  nature  frisky  and  perverse 

She  married  herself  in  secret  to  the  worse, 

On  solemn  promise  she  should  speedily  get  her  fill 

Of  what  is  usually  stuffed  in  a  purse. 

She  stipulated  in  the  ceremony 

That  her  new  spouse  should  coil  his  telling  tail, 

Nor  ever  leap  the  tropic  Stygian  rail 

Except  in  decent  garb. of  God  or  money. 

The  Devil  had  no  vanity  about  him 

When  he  could  propagate  his  special  doctrine; 

His  Majesty  therefore  of  course  consented, 

And   Mrs.   England  never  has  repented. 

He  dressed  himself  like  Christ  without  a  sin. 

And  lined  the  suit  with  gold  and  carnal  vim. 

V. 
Since  then  the  dame  has  known  connubial  blisses, 
Tho  seldom  taken  for  a  married  Mrs. 
Nor  has  she  sued  the  Devil  for  divorce 
On  grounds  of  ill  support  or  of  remorse. 
He  ploughs  the  planet  up  to  richly  feed  her, 
You'd  think  the  cunning  Fiend  must  surely  need 

her 
To  carry  out  his  Eve  and  Eden  crotchet. 
And  have  a  deputy  on  earth  to  watch  it. 

VI. 
With  faithful  wife's  enthralled  precocity 
Fair  England  copied  all  her  Devil  did, 
Even  the  Christ-clothes  in  which  his  claws  were 

hid, 

85 


And  scaled  perfection  with  velocity. 
She  learned  to  be  a  deuced  pious  robber 
And  with  Jesus-mask  held  up  the  Universe; 
To  defend  herself  against  a  straggling  curse 
Built  a  church  and  put  a  parson  in  to  slobber. 

Went  to  hell  upon  a  queenly  visitation 
To   inspect  the  Devil's   educated  wards; 
Found  in  hell  a  classic  double  population, 
Upper  class  of  landed  gentry  and  the  lords, 
And  a  cultivated  multipated  mixture 
Of  inventors  of  machinery  and  swords. 
These — I  say  it  without  bitterness  or  stricture, 
We  must  love  the  Devil   and  always  speak  him 

sweet, 
For  it's  rough  to  call  the  Devil  names  and  hit  him, 
Some  dark  midnight  in  an  alley  we  may  meet — 
These  the  highest  classes  were  that  hell  affords. 
How  the  Devil  had  conceived  a  home  to  fit  him. 
Studied  England,  virgin  and  discreet. 

VII. 
The  machinery  of  Hades  had  a  mission, 
Managed  by  the  aristocracy  of  hell, 
To  intensify  the  anguish  and  afiliction 
Of  the  damned  and  under  classes  as  they  fell. 
And  the  beauty  of  this  devil  institution 
Maiden  England  studied  lovingly  and  well. 
How  the  damned  and  fallen  progeny  of  Adam, 
Fiercely  burning  in  the  everlasting  fat. 
For  the  sin  of  contradicting  those  above  'em. 
Blew  the  bellows  and  pumped  oil  in  the  vat; 
Toiled  and  cooked  themselves,  and  turned  for  ap- 
probation 
To  the  Demon  owners  of  the  hell-machine; 

86 


Gladly  felt  the  torture-fangs  of  dissolution 

If  the  owners  watched  them  fry  and  heard  them 

scream. 
And  this  bodied  vision  of  her  husband's  dream 
The  social  art  of  this  demonic  scheme^ 
Maiiien  England  studied  lovingly  and  well. 

VIII. 

With  an  inspiration  nothing  less  than  Christian, 
Sobered,  solemned  and  a  little  archly  aged. 
Having  started  for  the  damned  a  soup  subscription, 
And  the  concentrated  look  of  one  that's  saged. 
Soaring  home  upon  His  Highness  gallant  flipper. 
In  such  safety  passing  through  the  Dog  and  Dip- 
per, 
Set  she  then  with  diligence  about  applying 
The  consummate  secret  she  had  learned  in  Hell — 
How  to  mould  her  people  with  the  art  of  lying. 
And  of  mighty  dividends  to  get  a  swell. 
With  the  skilled  co-operation  of  the  Master, 
With  her  avarice  progressing  ever  faster, 
With  oblique  stupidity  to  ever  last  her, 
In  the  bloody  sea  of  capital  she  cast  her. 

IX. 

'Twas  not  long  before  the  frisky  froward  virgin 
Had  her  azure  island  modeled  as  below, 
And  the  decent  people  in  it  most  vergin' 
On  the  pathos  and  the  salience  of  woe; 
Aristocracy  benignantly  a-scourgin' 
The  Democracy  to  make  the  engines  go. 

Far  aloft,  upon  the  smoke  and  curling  hate, 
Sits  the  Devil,  softly  smiling,  mixing  Fate. 


m 


X. 

We'll  leave  him  busy  at  his  chemistry, 

For  biologic  question  difficult, 

And  geologic  problem  more  occult 

Than  stirring  sour  acids  two  or  three. 

Our  question  is,  what  came  of  England's  soul 

In  these  three  hundred  years  of  deviltry? 

'Twill  need  a  very  microscopic  eye 

To  find  that  thing  in  heaven,  or  hedge,  or  hole. 

Her  soul,  it  died,  and  perpendicular  fell 

Until  it  reached  the  upper  crust  of  hell. 

Eternally  expecting  there  to  dwell, 

Kissed  by  its  royal  lover  now  and  then — 

A  virtuous  wife  knows  seldom  if  or  when. 

But  I've  a  marv'lous  wonder  now  to  tell: 

The  ugly  little  soul  expired  again! 

There  died,  that  is,  its  more  immortal  puissance, 

And  thus  removed  a  universal  nuisance. 

A  soul  quite  normally  can  never  die. 

But  when  it's  festered  through  and  through  with 

lie 
Like  England's,  'tneither  has  hell-fat  to  fry, 
Nor  lucent  elasticity  to  laugh 
And  make  hell's  lower  classes  writhe  and  cry. 

XI. 
But  garish  England,  courted  by  the  Devil, 
Needed  no  soul,  and  was  no  moping  rebel 
To  that  prophetic  circumstance 
Which  killed  her  conscience  in  advance, 
And  left  her  body  free  to  dance 
Upon  the  graves  of  all  her  sons 
Destroyed  by  merchantry  or  guns. 
Besides,  the  Devil  filled  her  head  with  notions, 
Who  formerly  had  fiiied  her  soul  with  potions: 


A  soul  is  a  commodity 
Superfluous  for  you  or  me: 
Just  look  at  hell^  how  well  it  thrives 
On  other  people's  souls  and  wives. 
When  I  fell  down  from  Heaven  ejected, 
My  soul  by  God  like  tooth  extracted, 
'Twas  thought  by  several  in  the  Universe 
That  I  v/as  then  in  a  very  petit  hearse. 
But  I've  succeeded  in  my  business 
And  even  troubled  God  with  dizziness. 
I  never  knew  real  gratification 
Until  that  fortunate  stratification 
Classed  my  soul  and  boay  apart 
And  left  my  muscles  without  a  heart. 

XII. 
Look  at  me,  angel — devil,  I  mean. 
Pride  of  the  Sages  you  have  seen! 
Here  in  myself  are  concentrated 
Every  good  thing  the  j^ges  fated! 
I  am  supreme,  I  am  the  dream, 
The  absolute,  infinite,  perfect  scheme, 
Grown  from  the  forces  that  sv/ay  the  spaces 
And  keep  the  Universe  in  its  traces. 
Give  your  imagination  fiight. 
Mount  your  fancy  on  stars  and  light; 
Stretch  your  mind  on  a  bed  of  kites 
Fastened  to  Jupiter's  satellites; 
Waft  your  thoughts  to  Saturn's  bal, 
Catch  her  rings  before  you  fall. 

If  sap  of  science  is  in  your  make  up 
Give  it  an  Oxford  champagne  shake  up; 
Bring  your  wits  from  hunting  foxes 
To  thinly  think  through  college  proxies. 

89 


Give  your  lords  responsible  places 

To  fail  in,  with  their  mutton  faces. 

For  instance,  let  them  go  to  sleep 

In  the  heart  of  an  African  Boer  creep, 

Where  scouts  and  sentinels  are  not  needed 

Since  *'Bobs"e's  brains  were  ne'er  exceeded. 

You  know  that  Low  Dutch  strategy 

A  gartery  Lord's  too  swell  to  see! 

Your  brimming  bourgeoisotic  graces, 

Legacy  from  lower  races. 

Relic  of  the  nether  spaces 

From  which  man  emerged  triumphant 

As  a  protoplasmic  lump  scant 

Of  all  the  virtues  in  the  brine 

But  those  of  England's  upper  ten — 

They  fabulously  suck  and  swallow 

What  others  make  and  sadly  mellow — 

Arouse  to  make  you  comprehend 

The  devil's  blessing  I  extend! 

If  more  is  needed,  take  a  dose 

Of  English  manners  caught  morose. 

Your  wanton  mind  must  be  impounded, 

Of  demon's  thought  to  be  surrounded; 

For  one  debauchery-bemuddled 

And  gold-inebriation  fuddled. 

Is  difficult  to  stimulate 

Or  mentally  to  impregnate. 

XIII. 

If  your  mighty  cerebellum  's  swelled  to  cracking, 
To  discharge  my  vital  spark  there's  nothing  lack- 
ing. 

The  secret  that  I  now  surrender, 
90 


Earth's  and  hell's  consummate  blender, 

Done  by  me  and  generated, 

Shall  by  you  be  venerated. 

Proudly,  loudly  I  confess, 

I,  the  Devil,  am  Success! 

Where  success  exalted  shimmers. 

In  the  mess  my  hissing  simmers. 

And  the  potence  of  my  magic. 

Which  men  estimate  as  tragic, 

Is  that  where  my  soul  existed 

Nature's  flint  is  now  encysted. 

In  the  cauldrons  that  I  govern 

There  is  not  a  single  love  urn: 

Soul  is  love  in  flesh  disporting, 

Brimstone  murders  Love  in  courting. 

True  love  never  wore  the  dress 

Of  the  slattern  named  Success. 

To  succeed  you  kill  your  lover, 

Soul  and  aspiration  smother. 

Blossom  out  a  cosmic  Judas, 

Eared  and  evermore  a  crude  ass. 

In  this  soulless,  loveless  essence. 

Have  you  Hell  in  punctured  presence. 

As  I  said  once  on  a  time  before  in  chattin' 
Upon  a  mountain  with  a  Jew  in  Latin, 
The  Kingdoms  of  the  Earth  shall  be  your  dinner 
Now  that  your  mummied  soul  can  die  no  skinnier. 
Go  to,  and  grab  the  Mongol,  Black,  and  Bear, 
Success  and  hell  attend  you  everywhere. 

XIV. 
For  three  good  centuries  old  England  throve 
Without  a  soul,  and  built  a  giant  frame 


91 


Of  property  that,  like  the  Bebel  tower, 

Rose  up  and  interviewed  the  stars,  and  drove 

Her  rivals  mad  with  spite,  making  them  cower 

Like  paupered  tramps  before  her  bonded  shame. 

All  envied,  hated  and  despised  the  beast, 

And  prayed  to  God  that  they  might  share  the  feast. 

They  knew  that  England  was  a  bloated  liar. 

And  sought  to  bloat  themselves  as  much  or  more, 

Thereby  to  swallow  her,  legs,  ears  and  roar. 

And  get  themselves  equipped  to  lie  still  higher. 

They  quickly  learned  the  art  of  lying. 
And  on  its  windy  bladders  took  to  flying; 
But  with  their  feelings  were  so  deeply  freighted, 
The    bladders    balked,    and    merely    kicked    and 

waited. 
Their  pates  of  tow  and  crates  of  woe  were  puzzled, 
Their  canine  teeth  and  wallet  jaws  were  muzzled. 
Witch  England,  far  above  them,  lied  and  sailed; 
They  lied  below  and  tried  again  and  failed. 
Till  one  exploded  from  behind  his  beer  mug: 
'Farewell  my  soul,  this  is  thy  last  fond  dear  hug!* 
Then  threw  his  soul  upon  the  shrinking  ground 
And  bladdered  heavenward  v/ith  a  fearful  bound. 
Each  took  his  soul  out  of  his  breeches  pocket 
As  one  would  draw  an  eye  out  of  its  socket, 
And  flung  it  hard  upon  a  cruel  rock 
To  kill  it  dead  and  out  of  misery  take  it. 
To  their  astonishment  it  didn't  break  it, 
But  the  poor  stone  was  shattered  by  the  shock. 
Upward  they  soared  to  wend  among  the  comets, 
As  sick  to  see  as  one  that  virtue  vomits. 


92 


XV. 

The  good  dame  England  had  a  mighty  offspring 

whose 
Papa  was  said  to  be  one  Washington. 
Its  homely  habits  and  gigantic  thews 
And  cunning  pertinacity  to  choose 
Good  company — itself — and  always  shun 
The  fireside  hearth  where  ma  and  devil  chatted, 
Finding  in  their  concupiscence  and  wooings 
No  source  of  family  pride  or  filial  fun; 
Tho  seeing  its  mother  daily  grow  more  fatted 
With  money,  devil-furnished  by  the  ton, 
Was  still  too  young  to  comprehend  her  doings  . 
Such  orgies  had  this  English  she  at  home 
With  her  dark  subterranean  paramour. 
That  on  one  noted  Eighteenth  Century  morn 
The  youth  got  up  and  sailed  beyond  the  bourne 
Which  islands  England  in,  resolved  to  roam 
Free  and  aloof,  on  virgin  mount  and  moor. 
And  the  disgracing  brothel  to  forget, 
From  which  sun,  soul,  and  love,  and  honor,  had 

set. 
Had  you  then  journeyed  down  the  trembling  sea 
To  look  upon  the  promise  of  that  youth. 
You  must  have  felt  the  inarticulate  thrill 
Of  some  new  faintly  whispering  truth 
By  the  great  universe  conceived, 
An  effort  of  the  deeply  sleeping  will 
To  rouse  itself  from  its  impotency. 
And  then  inconsolate  you  would  have  grieved. 

XVI. 
For  when  this  hopeful  boy  to  manhood  mounted, 
And  European  slaves  expectant  throbbed 


93 


For  glad  fulfillment  of  tMt  giant  promise 

To  break  the  nations'  chains  with  sledge  of  truth, 

Inaugurating  something  due  the  sun 

And  owed  the  moon  in  gratitude  for  shining, 

In  payment  for  the  patient  light  fney've  shed 

Through  aeons  so  interminably  long. 

That  star-dust  man  might  sprout,  and  grow,  and 

bud. 
And  be  that  fabulously  perfect  thing 
For  which  the  teeming  milky  way  had  toiled 
And  grass  had  grown  and  the  fair  sea  moaned — 
Then  what  did  he  but  turn  a  somersault 
And  kick  his  early  morals  to  the  devil, 
Behaving  with  such  transcendental  fault 
That  he  convinced  the  sage  whose  heads  were  level 
That  Satan  was  the  fellow's  actual  sire, — 
Together  with  the  virgin  weird  and  dire; 
That  he  was  gotten  in  a  carnal  sin 
When  England  let  by  night  the  devil  in. 
For  on  what  other  doctrine  hypothetic 
Could  his  debauchery  and  doings  hypocritic 
Be  sanctioned  by  hereditary  laws. 
Unless  descended  from  the  chap  with  claws? 
He  played  the  devil's  undisputed  pranks 
With  such  agility  with  his  long  shanks 
As  but  blue-blooded  fiends  could  hope  to  rival; 
Mere  mortals  in  the  art  would  droop  and  drivel. 

XVII. 
He  practised  with  a  devil-borrowed  shrewdness 
The  motions  of  his  mother's  sorry  lewdness. 
Dressed  as  a  saint,  with  Bible  for  a  bludgeon, 
Went  over  all  the  planet  sleekly  trudgin'. 
The  colored  piccaninnies  sharply  nudgin* 


94 


To  get  excuse  to  throw  'em  in  a  dudgeon. 

Then  if  they  cried  and  scratched  and  hit  him  back, 

At  once  he  put  'em  in  his  carpet-sack, 

In  ribaldry  yclept  his  market  sack — 

Like  mama  England  with  her  billion  niggers, 

'Mong  whom  the  starving  Hindu  dimly  Aggers, 

Who  robs  one  continent  of  food  and  rubies 

Wherewith  to  spank  South  African  Dutch  boobies — 

Upon  the  fiend-fires  of  assimilation 

Burned  up  each  rubbishy  and  lesser  nation. 

And  then  sailed  home  to  dance  and  drink  and  pray, 

Until  another  henroost  came  his  way. 

XVIII. 
A  prouder  father  never  was  than  Satan, 
Whose  blood  with  England's  mixed  made  suck  a 

great  'un. 
That  England  was  not  far  from  Devil  removed 
In  blood  and  natural  substance,  thus  was  proved; 
For  only  species  similar  are  fertile. 
Others  most  ruthlessly  the  offspring  curtail. 
An  ape  and  cow,  for  instance,  lack  affinity 
Like  England's  and  the  Devil's  consanguinity. 
Yet  like  the  mule,  with  Devil's  Sam  't  may  happen 
There'll  be  no  second  generation  gotten. 
Not  as  a  certain  family  of  Jukes, 
Whose  business  is  to  multiply  the  spooks. 
The  near  relationship  of  Greeks  and  Gods 
Their  progeny  attested  'gainst  some  odds; 
Tho  with  the  ancient  devils  they  sometimes  flirted, 
Nothing  like  Uncle  Sam  was  Whence  concerted. 

XIX. 
So  went  events  until  a  certain  season 
When  England  howled  against  the  Devil  treason. 


95 


For  in  the  climax  of  the  mighty  stir 

Which  she  had  made  to  steal  some  populations — 

The  highest  transports  of  her  love  relations — 

The  arch  fiend  seemed  to  have  deserted  her. 

The  simple  fact  was,  miracle  to  most, 

A  few  mere  herders  in  a  distant  desert 

Displayed  more  wit  than  all  her  titled  inert 

Generals,  incalculable  host 

Of  soldiers,  and  her  cannon  backed  by  pelf 

Stol'n  from  the  world  by  England's  Law  of  Self. 

This  was  too  much — for  equanimity — 

And  England  sent  Lord  Kitchener  to  hell 

To  bring  her  husband  up  to  earth  pell  mell. 

Who  only  brought  from  His  Sublimity — 

Yawning  upon  a  superheated  cauldron 

Which  his  vast  limbs  lay  stretched  out  supine  on, 

In  which  the  British  soldiers  lately  dead 

Consumed  immortally,   a  devil's  bed 

Whose  feathers,  human  flesh  and  bone, 

Some  thousand  imps  poured  boiling  oil  on — 

These  words,  spoken  in  surly  English  tone: 

XX. 
Go  tell  the  woman  who  demands  my  presence, 
That,    having    earth's    whole    structure    much    be- 

fussed, 
Enjoy  the  consequences  nov/  she  must. 
I  made  a  couple  of  miscalculations 
In  my  United  Kingdom  recreations. 
First,  was  the  limitation  of  my  travels. 
One  like  myself  brought  up  to  have  hell's 
Aerial  messengers  to  bring  him  news. 
Is  sometimes  over-hasty  in  his  views. 


90 


The  place  Transvaal  I  wholly  overlooked, 
Hence  all  my  calculations  overcooked. 
My  studies  were  in  youth  somewhat  neglected; 
I  always  thought  South  Africa  infected 
With  men  of  Ethiopic  form  and  feature, 
Or  even  smaller  pigmy  apish  creature. 
I  thought  mankind  divided  in  two  lots: 
Liars  and  thieves  like  you,  financial  sots, 
Including  Philippine  Sam  and  all  of  Europe, 
And  every  civilized  sinner  from  the  boor  up. 
The  other  lot  I  briefly  called  wild  niggers, 
Particularly  adapted  breakfast  food  for  triggers. 
That  there  survived  a  stock  of  independence 
Outside  the  niggers,  I  doubted  with  a  vengeance. 
And  niggers,  like  the  subjects  of  Khalifa, 
Run  up  the  leaden  jaws  of  cannon  if  a 
Tinned  general  appears,  and  die  like  deer, 
Tweaking  the  Creusot  cannon  with  a  spear. 

XXI. 
America  no  longer  now  obstructs 
The  progress  of  enslaving  usufructs. 
And  may  be  medaled  foremost  foe  of  freedom. 
Addicted  once  to  hear  the  weak  and  heed  'em. 

I  knew  that  with  my  wealth  and  wiles  I'd  rotted 
The  various  modern  virtues  pruned  and  potted; 
That  all  the  civilized  and  culture  crammed 
Were  crutched  mechanical  puppets  I  had  damned; 
And  that,  with  luxury  and  millionaires. 
Cowed  poverty  and  greedy  butcher  snares. 
To  trap  the  hunted  remnants  of  the  brave, 
All  good  was  long  since  in  the  grave. 
So  that  it  gave  me  quite  a  nervous  shock 
When  British  troops  got  such  a  vital  knock. 

97 


XXII. 

The  world  is  not  yet  all  by  me  dissected, 

Its  sweetness  have  I  not  yet  wholly  sucked, 

Its  spirit  fruit  not  altogether  plucked, 

A  little  manhood's  somewhere  resurrected. 

Go  tell  the  stomachy  dame  that  sent  you  here 

That  I  bethink  me  she  has  much  to  fear. 

For  where  both  beer  and  bible  fail  to  trouble, 

Where  gin  and  civilization  are  but  stubble. 

Where  men  have  brains  enough  to  scorn  the  dol- 
lar— 

A  certain  circumstance  of  mental  squalor — 

Where  they  reject  the  pirate-plank  monopoly 

And  love  their  freedom  more  than  hankered  prop- 
erty. 

My  wiles  as  devil  fail. 

My  lurid  fires  pale, 

My  quirpish  spirits  quail, 

And  like  a  slow  hell-snail 

I  quiver  and  crawl, 

Incontinent  fall 

From  earth's  dome 

To  my  hell  home. 

Here  my  ovens  I  fill 

To  thaw  me  of  the  chill 

Of  sitting  in  a  wind 

Where  people  had  not  sinned. 

I  mean  I  felt  the  blast 

Of  manhood  blowing  past. 

Which  more  upsets  my  nerves 

Than  all  this  hell-fire  serves. 

With  warm  petroleum  curves 


And  dead  men's  melting  sigh, 
To  straightly  rectify. 
So  I  can't  come 
To  madam  glum. 

The  cold  I  have  would  hang  on  long 

If  I  should  mount  my  motor-prong. 

You  can't  conceive  the  speed  with  which 

My  bicycle  tail  begins  to  switch; 

It  bangs  me  through  the  universe 

An  orbit  hourly  or  worse. 

The  cosmic  drafts  I  never  mind 

If  good  companionship  I  find; 

'Tis  only  when  I  meet  with  dumb  saints 

I'm  taken  with  my  old  lung  'plaints. 

The  earth  was  one  of  my  oases, 

A  golden  frame  for  devil's  graces, 

One  restful  spot  in  solemn  spaces; 

Where  nothing  is,  no  wrong  solaces. 

But  now  these  dozen  death-or-freedom  Boers 

Have  sent  me  here  to  doctors  and  hell's  cures. 

XXIII. 
My  second  mistake  your  mistress  may  appreciate: 
My  tendency  to  virtue's  nerve  depreciate. 
Altho  I've  hemorrhage  and  inflammation 
When  men  with  daring  soul  invade  my  station, 
So  few  of  these  withstand  the  sugared  butter 
I  melt  before  them  in  a  golden  gutter, 
That  I  decided  all  were  nincompoops, 
And  came  to  treat  them  all  as  itching  dupes; 
Itching  for  money,  leadership  or  name. 
For  pleasure,  premiership  or  bloated  fame. 


99 


Could  buy  the  whole  set  with  a  bauble  shining, 
And  set  them  murdering  and  bible-whining, 
By  mention  of  a  gold  mine  up  in  Sirius, 
Just  scalable  by  damned  war  delirious. 
I  know  the  various  species  of  this  itch. 
It  seldom  fails  to  operate.  Lord  Kitch. 
Canst  blame  me  then  all  humans  for  despising 
And  their  few  consciences  for  undersizing? 
Had  I  of  Boers  and  liberty-or-death  heard, 
Should  have  straightway    their    principles    bribed 

deathward 
With  promise  of  an  audience  with  your  queen, 
Kneebreeches  on,  and  buckles,  colored  green. 
What  burgher  would  not  Freedom  soothly  cheat 
If  he  could  lick  Victoria's  lovely  feet? 
Or  who  for  Liberty  would  shed  his  blood 
If  he  could  crawl  a  day  in  royal  mud? 

I  learned  this  from  the  patriot  Yankee  States; 

There's  not  an  unctuous  patriot  crude  or  swellish 

But  would  his  principles  devour  with  relish 

If  served  upon  the  Queen's  reception  plates. 

Digestion's  found  to  be  divine 

In  company  with  royal  swine; 

What  easily  dissolves  a  stone 

Can  chylify  a  small  backbone. 

I  once  defined  a  Yankee  thus: 

A  Freeman  filled  with  British  pus — 

You  stick  your  pin  beneath  the  skin, 

Which  is  a  little  century  thin, 

And  oozes  out  an  English  muss. 

You've  nothing  but  an  English  cuss. 


100 


He  sells  his  daughter  co  a  rotttiii  lord, 
The  mass  enrich  him  of  their  own  accord. 
That  millions  he  may  send  to  English  cad 
Ten  thousand  girls  must  turn  to  harlotry, 
Girls  beautiful,  in  Freedom's  imagery, 
Yet  are  they  infinitely  sad. 

I  could  not  set  the  Boer  above  the  Yankee, 

Who  gives  his  daughters  to  me  and  says  thank'ee. 

My  purpose  is  to  stay  in  hell  till  summer. 

To  give  my  progeny  on  earth  a  chance 

My  cause  for  their  self-interest  to  advance, 

And  turn  the  Boer  into  a  tramp  and  bummer. 

My  compliments  to  your  reputed  Miss, 

May  she  kill  many  and  experience  bliss. 

XXIV. 
Lrord  Culinary  paddled  home  to  light, 
And  told  his  mistress  all  as  was  dight. 
The  story  is — I  think  it  not — she  swore! 
And  screamed,  Hell's  fires  I'll  quench  with  gore! 
As  she  lay  foaming  on  the  satin  rug, 
A  postscript  came  from  hell  by  lightning  fire-bug. 
It  read  as  follows:     Sweet  my  own. 
In  drink  and  epilepsy  grown, 
Take  heart  and  take  a  million  pounds 
And  go  your  educating  rounds. 
As  once  we  lay  on  lily  bed 
I  what  you  thought  was  silly  said; 
Said,  *I  the  devil  am  success;' 
Tho  something  more,  am  nothing  less. 
The  Boers,  uncommonly  malicious. 
Are  not  commonly  avaricious. 


101 


Success  to  them's  a  picayune, 
To  you  and  all,  earth's  only  boon. 
That  's  why  you  can't  succeed  to  lick  'em, 
Your  crude  molasses  will  not  stick  'em. 
Take  my  advice  and  but  refine  it, 
With  education  surface-shine  it, 
And  they  may  leave  their  windy  valleys 
And  go  to  school  to  windy  sallies. 
They  may,  by  studying  the  Greeks, 
Become  most  cultivated  sneaks. 
With  Latinized  curriculum 
And  Lofty  Caesar  tickle  'em. 
Familiarized  with  ancient  muck-cess. 
You  may  entice  to  modern  success. 
O  Love,  believe  my  proverb-thunder, 
Educate  whom  you  would  plunder. 

XXV. 
Down  in  hell  the  devil  leered, 
Countenance  besmeared  and  bleared; 
To  himself  thus  cogitated. 
Hate  and  appetite  o'er  sated: 
Does  this  old  English  beast  carnivorous 
Imagine  from  our  destined  bent  to  shiver  us? 
We  manufacture  universal  woe. 
With  dragnet  of  success  I  deftly  tow 
All  humankind  to  gnashing  poisoned  sorrow. 
More  matchless  woe  tomorrow  and  tomorrow. 
Hence,  with  this  venomed  bait  success  I've  lured 

her, 
Adown  the  avenues  to  hell  adjured  her. 
Yet  in  my  marital  voluptuousness 
Said  never  once  success  is  happiness; 


102 


The  fool's  ambition  had  invented  that 
Before  I  raised  to  her  my  thrice-cocked  hat. 
My  double  purpose  is  to  mock  and  damn  her, 
While  using  her  the  Boers  to  mock  and  hammer. 
Tho  from  the  fiend  Success  the  Boer  recoils, 
I'll  cover  him  with  British  success-boils. 
But  neither  one  of  them  shall  understand, 
The  shattering-rock  of  happiness  I  stand. 

XXVI. 
The  Boer  fights  on,  the  English  soldiers  fall. 
While  all  the  sons  of  liberty  rejoice 
That  daring  Freedom  has  again  found  voice. 
And  in  her  mountains  seems  invulnerable. 
The  tumor  of  the  world,  England,  fights  on; 
Her  apoplectic  visage,  stretched  and  pale. 
Of  viperish  infamy  the  earthly  paragon; 
The  strength  of  empire  now  of  no  avail; 
Her  glory  in  the  balance  wavering. 
Her  senile  prestige  faintly  quavering. 
And  a  new  world-era  in  the  dawn. 

XXVII. 
England  reputed  home  of  equal  rights. 
Self-haloed  as  the  despots'  youthful  David, 
By  whose  example  all  must  mount  the  flights 
That  lead  to  civic  heaven,  whose  cobbled  aisles 
Conduct  the  poor  and  rich  to  equal  votes — 
God's  special  pearl  in  Anglo-Saxon  isles. 
The  hard-won  right  to  utter  in  a  box 
A  wish  the  House  of  Lords  thence-onward  blocks. 
And  those  objecting  shoots  within  the  moats — 
For  English  liberty  means  you  shall  die 
If  having  voted  and  blown  ofC  your  steam, 


103 


You  cry,  A  vote  is  not  a  tinsel  dream, 

To  be  dispelled  and  vetoed  by  the  'high,' 

Tho  cast  in  conquering  majority. 

The  part  of  liberty,  in  British  custom, 

Is  to  make  people  howl  and  vote,  then  bust  'em. 

The  simple  satisfaction  of  the  howl 

Contents  the  vulgar  and  besmooths  the  scowl. 

The  idea  that  a  noble  Britisher 

Should  make  his  vote  a  lever  to  uplift 

The  burden  of  the  ages,  kingly  gift 

Of  those  who  sit  upon  his  back  and  purr. 

Is  complicated;    he  prefers  to  smoke — 

(And  batter  heads  of  those  who  cry  down  war 

And  cry  up  human  freedom  and  the  Boer). 

For  empty  abstract  right  to  vote  with  paper. 

He  cuts  the  most  unprecedented  caper: 

He  cuts  his  very  economic  throat. 

By  all  the  upper  classes  he  is  cut. 

He  cuts  his  cloth  and  finds  he  has  no  coat. 

From  all  elected  privilege  is  he  shut, 

And  finally  warms  himself  in  Potter's  rut. 

For  this  bleak  British  liberty  and  feed, 

The  vulgar  British  vote,  and  bleat,  and  bleed. 

XXVIII. 
After  Lord  Savagehash  had  left  the  synod. 
The  devil  lay  reflecting  on  the  sin  odd 
Of  sixteen  Boers  delaying  Hell's  progression 
And  making  all  damnation  hold  a  session. 
The  more  he  thought,  the  bluer  did  he  get. 
His  flaming  skin  got  absolutely  wet. 
A  feeling  dangerously  new  to  him 


104 


Across  his  wrought-iron  chest  electrically  swam. 

A  shifting  feeling  of  incertitude 

That  if  the  neurasthenic  brood 

Of  humans  hypnotized  and  mewed 

Should  have  the  Boer  struggle  long  before  their 

eyes, 
It  would  said  devil-hypnotism  vial  capsize. 
For  well  he  knew  the  devil's  power  stands 
And  shines,  upon  imaginary  sands. 
The  humans  fear  and  reverently  trust  him. 
Which  gives  mesmeric  potency  to  just  him; 
And  when  they  learn  to  think  that  he  is  weak. 
Tail    sheathed,    bray    breathed,    uncheeked,    away 

he'll  sneak. 

XXIX. 
The  exudations  from  the  hams  of  Atkins, 
And  various  other  smells  from  heroes'  fat  skins 
Stuffed  ^nd  expressed  by  England  as  a  gift. 
At  which  he,  mollified,  now  pecked  and  sniffed, 
Had  made  him  reckless  of  the  fragile  tenure 
By  which  he  rules  the  destinies  of  men  or 
Of  even  women,  tho  they  attend  his  churches, 
And  occupy  his  prefatory  perches, 
In  preparation  for*  their  hell  excursions 
When  earth  shall  lose  its  charming  last  diversions 
Of  gladiatorial  trade  and  war 
And  dodging  Christ's  stern  neither,  nor. 

He  sat  upright  and  said  to  General  Lawton, 
Now  quite  a  crony  as  the  latest  thought  on 
The  prudent  art  of  prudence  in  a  bog 
And  civilization  shooting  though  a  fog: 


105 


I  much  commend  the  Yankee  bent 

Of  giving  God  a  safety  scent, 

That  when  the  critical  moment  comes 

Religion  solves  political  sums. 

It  *s  just  the  same  except  in  name 

Which  fiend  you  trust  and  which  you  blame; 

Trust  me  and  you'll  the  devil  see, 

Trust  God  and  you'll  the  devil  be. 

This  God  when  under  a  physical  strain 

Reveals  the  Devil's  phthisical  brain. 

The  Yankee's  speculative  mould 

Made  use  of  God,  England,  of  gold. 

The  Yankee  crows  and  England  quails, 

Who  God-wind  sows  shall  fill  his  sails. 

But  whether  he  sows  to  God  or  me 

The  harvest  is  my  classical  fee. 

XXX. 
The  devil,  leaving  Lawton  sore  confused, 
Strolled  solemnly  away  and  mused: 
All  England  and  all  hell  before  the  Boer 
Bow  down,  compelled  and  poor. 
They  volley  their  red  flames  of  sinuous  death 
In  vain,  and  launch  their  poisoned  shibboleth 
To  see  it  whistle  home  again, 
A  devastating  boomerang. 
Their  own  arms  breaking  with  an  anvil  clang, 
Because  the  Boer  is  not  yet  dead  within, 
Not  yet,  like  England,  pickled  wealth  in  sin. 
His  soul  still  beats  immaculately  strong. 
While  that  survives,  ev'n  hell  may  thunder  long 
Its  huge  bombardment  of  atrocious  deeds. 
And  victory  flutter  far  from  its  damned  creeds. 


106 


Mankind,  perceiving  this,  will  spurn  my  yoke. 
Tyrants     like     England,     presidents,     kings    and 

thieves, 
Who  feast  on  men  as  parasites  on  leaves. 
They'll  spring  triumphantly  upon  and  choke. 
Completing  the  vast  cycle  of  their  slavery, 
And  in  that  act  of  vanquishing  deliverance 
Go  free  of  sin — my  mesmerizing  influence — 
And  in  one  blow  destroy  me  and  my  knavery. 
I  shudder!    Are  not  these  seeds  of  revolution? 
I  see  the  bloody  knife  of  Anarchy! 
Men  sometimes  kill  in  order  to  be  free! 
To  kill  is  murder,  murder  's  sin!     Confusion! 
Is  not  sin  sin,  tho  done  to  vanquish  sin? 
Shall  earth  grow  sinless  through  a  sinful  sin? 
More  woeful  would  this  be  than  all  iniquity! 
You  must  use  kindness  with  a  grizzly  bear, 
A  sinful  club  to  use  would  not  be  fair. 
And  this  applies  delightfully  to  sin  and  me. 
To  use  a  sin  to  kill  a  sin,  and  live, 
Is  more  obnoxious  to — hem, — me,  than  bible. 
Men  may  all  die,  but  must  not  practise  evil! 
Life,  is  a  worthless  little  thing  to  give! 

XXXI. 
This  doctrine's  perfect,  now  I  must  apply  it; 
When  virtue  chains  itself  I  do  defy  it. 
You  must  not  sin  to  bring  millenium  in; 
A  sin  is,  well,  whatever  sin  has  been. 
Once  make  it  sin  to  fight  superior  force 
And  you  may  talk  of  freedom  till  you're  hoarse. 
Your  duty  then's  to  wait  till  tyrant  power 
Gets  tired  and  good,  and  ceases  to  devour. 


107 


Resist  with  force  and  you're  a  cursed  criminal, 
They  kill  you  and  their  crime  is  versed  in  hymnal. 
This  is  the  collar  which  the  good  have  fitted 
Upon  themselves:    think  you  they're  to  be  pitied? 
I'll  show  this  shining  thought  to  mother  England, 
And  all  the  rest  will  copy  from  that  wing'd  land. 
But  simple  looking  Sam  don't  need  to  learn  it; 
He  simply  had  to  stir  his  blood  and  yearn  it. 

The  good  are  thus  my  coadjutors, 

I'll  make  them  all  my  plenary  tutors. 

To  them  I'll  intrust  the  difficult  art 

Of  teaching  the  world  we  must  not  part. 

They  must  never  use  force  to  drive  me  out, 

Force  would  be  wickedness,  undevout; 

But  I  can  use  force  to  keep  me  in. 

Force  against  my  force  would  be  sin. 

When  I  of  my  free  untrammeled  will 

Make  up  my  mind  no  more  to  kill. 

And  give  up  the  world  of  my  own  accord. 

The  millenium  will  have  probably  roared. 

It  rests  with  me  to  blow  the  horn. 

For  morally  none  may  wake  the  morn, 

But  when  I  do  it,  and  crack  my  doom. 

Good  Lord,  my  mind  will  have  scaled  the  flume! 

It  happens,  a  devil's  mind  can't  crack. 
So  the  world  for  ever'll  be  on  the  rack. 

XXXII. 
The  devil  now  prepared  to  stroll 
To  his  happy  orthodox  Anglican  goal. 
Folded  his  flannels  in  his  dressing  case, 
Shaved  well  his  tail  and  freshly  ground  the  point, 


108 


Fell  far  in  Asia  at  an  opium  joint, 

Rebounded  thence  to  Africa  with  grace. 

Here,  as    a    school    girl    with    her    well-thumb'd 

books. 
He  studied  everything  that  makes  a  Boer, 
Cornelian  woman  and  the  men  that  woo  'er, 
Sped  thence  away,  affrighted  at  their  looks, 
And  to  his  hundred  millionth  wife  thus  spake: 
xiiou  sunbeam  mellowing  a  distant  apple. 
Thou  match  that  teachest  fire  and  air  to  grapple, 
Thou  duck  that  bellowest  for  thy  Drake 
And  wouldst  throw  Duller  in  a  fiery  lake. 
Thou  bug  that  sittest  on  the  sun's  exterior 
To  hide  the  light  from  everything  inferior. 
And  sweetly  says,  Be  not  for  this  the  drearier. 
Thou  woman  then,  so  full  of  spleen  and  malice. 
That  I  would  rather  lose  thee  from  my  pipe 
Than  quaff  the  odor  of  thy  garnet  fiesh. 
And  have  thee  muddy  up  hell's  limpid  chalice 
Of  simple  blood  with  thine  aicontinent  juice 
Of  all  deflections  from  the  normal  in  thy  vice, — 
Thy  sphere  as  I  foresaw  in  drunken  dream 
Infallible,  is  earth,  stay  here  supreme. 
Conduct  damnation  here,  make  converts  ripe 
To  drop  expectant  in  the  foremost  sluice 
Tnat  sweeps  across  the  unfathomable  all 
To  my  proud  fall!     But  enter  not  hell's  close. 
For  thine  insatiable  female  wish 
To  be  distinguished  as  supremely  damned, 
And  from  the  Matterhorn  of  matchless  woe 
To  look  compassionately  down  on  those 
Who  suffer  less,  and  cry  in  anguished  scorn 


109 


And  jealous  triumph  over  all  thy  mates, 

**My  sin  and  suffering  surpasses  thine!" 

Shall  be  confirmed. 

Thou  Shalt  stay  glooming  here,  but  not  without 

conditions. 
Attend  the  voice  of  thy  diurnal  magistrate, 
Indulgent  with  the  mystery  of  thy  future  missions, 
As  first  it  doth  impartially  disseminate 
A  picture  of  thyself  and  tny  degenerate 
Land  unburned. 

XXXIII. 
I've  been  to  Africa  a-slumming, 
To  get  material  for  Extension  lectures; 
A  college  settlement  I  think  of  plumming. 
And  had  to  learn  the  natives'  gestures. 

In  the  wide  desert  still  is  fragrant  health. 
Men  are  not  dapper  phantom  clerks, 
Performing  counter-jumper  smirks. 
Scared  echoes  of  employers'  jerks, 
Without  a  phantom  rood  or  stone 
That  honorably  is  their  own. 
They  are  not  battlemented  collars 
Like  airy  peaks  of  Alpine  ice 
Inviolably  white  and  nice, 
The  work  of  laundry-ladies'  scholars. 
They  are  not  town  degenerates, 
But  are  the  eagle's  mountain  mates, 
Whose  aerie  is  the  wilderness, 
The  stars  their  everlasting  dress, 
At  home  in  evil  tempered  night. 
Cool  sorcerers  in  storm  and  fright. 


110 


'Tis  whispered  that  they  eat  with  knives, 
Yet  can  they  be  as  gods  in  battle; 
They  neither  napkins  use  nor  tattle, 
Yet  dare  they  well  protect  their  lives. 

XXXIV. 
I'd  like  to  see  a  big  ungainly  Boer 
Behind  the  counter  of  an  English  store, 
Discussing  sugar  at  so  much  an  ounce 
And  mastering  the  last  commercial  pounce. 
I'd  like  ev'n  more  to  see  him  as  a  student, 
Becoming  daily  deep  and  thin  and  prudent; 
Say,  learning  at  the  feet  of  Doctor  Schurman 
To  be  the  president's  waiter  and  a  pure  man. 
We've  now  at  schools  the  branch  diplomacy, 
To  teach  us  legally  to  roam  a  sea 
As  pirates,  but  without  conspiracy; 
To  fast  enchain  the  free  and  leave  'em  free. 
This  document  the  Boers  shall  next  examine, 
To  pass  in  victories  without  much  crammin*. 
To  wash  the  sunny  starch  out  of  their  sinews 
They  must  in  classes  fish  for  moral  minnows. 
X  stands  for  obligation,  and  XY 
The  sanction  carries  and  the  reason  why. 
But  what  you  are  to  do,  and  when,  and  how, 
Will  be  discussed  in  heaven,  not  now. 
While  here  enjoy  your  sense  of  obligation. 
And  be  yourself  contented  with  flirtation. 

Pursue  your  moral  studies  with  a  view 
To  be  professor  of  a  chosen  few; 
To  walk  in  metaphysic  adumbration 
And  let  your  conduct  go  in,  hum,  vibration; 


111 


To  hoard  your  energy  in  college  shades 

And  help  the  vulgar  horde  proceed  to  Had'es. 

Eschew  unpopularity  Hebraic, 

Soul-science  ethic  is  to  cure  an  ache; 

Fawn  on  the  Carnegies  and  Rockefellers 

To  teach  sweet  reason  to  the  rocky  sellers. 

What  is  the  purpose  of  Professor  Fudge 

If  not  to  make  the  rich  man's  pocket  budge? 

There's  Wellesley  now,  the  school  of  innocent  girls, 

Opens  its  mouth  for  Rockefeller  pearls; 

Its  faculty,  with  morals  ripe  tattoed. 

Decides  a  giver  's  not  to  be  tabooed. 

It  has  a  solemn  war  dance  in  a  meeting, 

And  votes  that  John  got  rich  'ithout  cheating. 

Here,  wife,  's  my  introduction  and  tuition 

To  Wellesley,  for  you  to  taKe  a  course  in  fishin'. 

The  wimmin  there  dispense  the  blood  of  Christ 

With  dying  poor  men's  blood  stirred  up  and  sliced. 

Tell    your    Miss    President    What's-her-Christian- 

name 
I  sent  you;  she'll  delightedly  exclaim. 
Take  this  tender  billet-doux  to  Wellesley, 
Safe  and  sound  forever  now  in  Hell's  lee: 

*Keep  your  skins  and  cuffs  immaculately  white, 
And  protect  yourselves  with  treatises  on  right; 
Send  the  under  class  to  bivouac  and  fight. 
Pay  the  tailor  bills  of  God  in  full  at  sight.' 

XXXV. 
One  height  must  be  assailed  with  solemn  wing 
Before  the  Boer  can  sycophantly  sing: 
That  is  the  time-crowned  House  of  Parliament, 


112 


The  ins  and  outs  and  underneaths  and  scent 
Of  which  he  must  know  better  than  the  dog 
That  knows  his  friends  by  smelling  of  the  log. 
Here  England's  favored  upper  classes  meet 
To  fashion  sacraments  that  garnish  cheat. 
Here  is  the  transformation  deftly  wrought 
Of  boiling  dowH  the  general  will  to  naught. 
Here  climb  the  cunning  acrobats  of  fortune, 
On  laws  that  are  Democracy's  abortion. 
The  people  swear  that  while  the  Commons  sit 
And  gaseous  odors  steamingly  emit, 
Decoctions  savory  of  its  own  sweet  wishes — 
That  they,  the  people!  get  the  loaves  and  fishes. 
The  Commons  legislate  the  things  that  suit  'em, 
And  next  day  loudly  over  England  toot  'em 
As  laws  enacted  by  the  godlike  people, 
Tho  made  by  them  alone  up  in  a  steeple. 
People  so  anodyned  and  ballot-dinned, 
Men  are  not,  but  are  horned  and  finned. 

The  best  prescription  known  for  cure  of  manhood 
Is  attendance  at  this  Central  Union  School, 
Where  the  students  study  pockets  they  may  cram 

good 
While  the  nation  takes  diploma  for  a  fool. 

Of  these  arts  they  know  but  little  in  the  desert. 
That  is  why  they  grow  such  mighty  muscles  there. 
Drag  them  into  pumps  and  swallow-tails  and  des- 
sert. 
Let  Delilah  cut  the  Samson's  golden  hair. 


113 


XXXVI. 

England,  thou  art  an  age  behind  the  times, 

Altho  behind  thee  is  an  age  of  crimes. 

Thou  canst  not  be  a  troglodyte 

And  lord  it  o'er  eternal  right; 

Thou  canst  not  fight  with  flints  and  stones 

And  break  the  Almighty's  cushioned  bones. 

Must,  if  thou  wilt  the  truth  enchain, 

Discard  thy  crumb'd  Silurian  brain. 

Take  now  thy  choice,  be  just  and  die 

Of  ennui,  far  removed  from  gore. 

Thy  realm  no  reeking  slaughter-house. 

Thy  poor  no  longer  shrieking  ghosts, 

Or  dying  on  the  battlefield 

To  feed  thy  gorgon-boweled  rich — 

This  course  to  you  is  twenty  hells. 

You  corpse-grown  smile  the  story  tells. 

The  other  way  is  rnodern,  up  to  date — 

Comprised  in  one  vast  title — Educate. 
XXXVII. 

Abandon    the    system    which    starves    out    your 
masses, 

The  proceeds  of  labor  distribute  with  fairness; 

Dissolve  and  extinguish  the  infamous  classes. 

The  robbers  who  curse  all  the  others  with  bare- 
ness. 

Can  you  tell  me,  my  dolt  with  catapult  nostril, 
How  the  masses  can  ever  raise  spirit  for  fighting, 
When  spirit  in  them  is  a  dry  desert  lost  rill 
Of  wretches  who  spend  half  their  days  no  food 
biting? 


114 


You  can't  make  a  batt'ring  ram  out  of  your  head 
If  millions  tliat  make  ybU,  skina  bread  froni  the 

gutter; 
You  can't  "be  a  famous  composer  of  lead 
If  your  masses  their  black  curse  of  Hate  on  you 

mutter.  ' 

€'ou  fool,  can  you  feed  your  high  upper  class  ulcer 

And  kieep  your  low  arms  strong  for  war  and  de- 
fence? 

Can  your'  ladyship  chastise  the  boor  that  insults 
her, 

While  freezing  her  bowels  with  class  reverence? 

Rob  your  workers,  deprive  them  of  hope  and  ambi- 
tion, 

Bloat  your  shirkers  and  stuff  their  bold  bellies 
with  all: 

When  war  comes,  arm  your  shadows  and  pray 
with  contrition, 

And  ride  with  your  stuffers  to  national  fall. 

So  unless  you  give  ear  to  my  other  obsession. 

The  hard  ways  of  Justice  you'll  have  to  embrace; 

Your  low  ones  make  equal  their  lords  of  oppres- 
sion. 

Fill  their  minds  and  their  bodies  with  strength 
and  with  grace. 

Your  condors  of  capital  drive  to  the  Channel 
And  drown  them  without  a  remorse  or  a  tear; 
Then  your  nation  will  grow  into  strength  that  will 

ban  hell. 
And  the  whole  universe  will  exultingly  fear. 

115 


Mind,   I   don't  recommend   this,    sweet    cowardly 

sloven. 
I  show  you  the  picture  to  make  you  recoil. 
'Tis  my  purpose  to  give  your  thick  pate  such  a 

clubbin' 
That  this  deuced  grand  vista  of  earth  you  will  foil. 

For  you  see  very  plainly  that  if  this  should  hap- 
pen 
Your  country'd  no  longer  be  hell's  charming  pal- 
ace; 
The  blood  of  mankind  you'd  no  longer  be  sappin*, 
From  your  realms  I  should  pack  my  defeated  val- 
ise. 

XXXVIII. 
I  am  now  about  to  tell  you 
Of  a  better  way  than  that: 
How  you  rob  the  little  people 
While  you  keep  the  richer  fat; 
How  you  keep  the  masses  slaving 
In  the  universal  way 
And  the  robbers  keep  a-raving 
Of  the  universal  ray 
Of  the  sun  that's  just  arising 
In  the  Oriental  East; 
And  the  food  they're  just  apprising 
For  an  ornamental  feast, 
Where  the  rich  shall  sit  as  usual 
At  the  tables  and  the  plates. 
And  the  poor  shall  flit  as  ever 
Empty  through  the  gorgeous  gates. 
And  believe  that  they  have  eaten 
Of  the  riches  from  the  deep, 
As  they  sink  with  bodies  beaten 
To  their  everlasting  sleep. 
116 


XXXIX. 

If  thou  wilt  be  my  brigadier  in  earnest, 
See  that  the  latest  tricks  of  Sam  thou  learnest. 
Your  population  is  composed  of  noodles 
Presided  over  by  some  lords  and  boodles. 
The  boodled  lords  are  fools  that  cannot  lead, 
The  people  dunces,  that  can  only  bleed. 
When  stood  against  a  man  or  two  with  guns 
Your  whole  creation  wobbles  round  and  runs. 
I  tell  you,  ancient  cow  with  parched  udders; 
The  world  has  left  behi^Hd  your  breed  of  cudders; 
Turn  off  your  belly-pated  lords  and  boodlers 
Or  your  tough  flesh  is  canned  for  Yankee  Dood- 

lers. 
Sam's  snappy  tricks  outnumber  yours  by  several, 
If  you  raise  felons  on  your  head  you  never' 11 
Have  strength  within  your  legs  to  beat  that  clever 

sell. 

XLr. 

You  must,  I  hate  to  say  it  cursed  spouse, 
You  topsails  cut  and  in  the  water  souse. 
To  beat  the  devil  with  the  devil's  tricks 
You  know's  a  proverb,  which  I  deem  prolix, 
But  find  most  pointed  when  applied  to  God. 
I  roll  the  Lord  beneath  the  rumbling  sod 
By  beating  him  with  his  own  fumbling  rod. 
I  take  his  virtues  out  of  his  own  mouth. 
And  leave  him  famishing  in  a  moral  drouth. 
That  is,  the  latest  virtue  he  evolves 
I  make  my  own,  and  neatly  make  it  solve 
My  trouble — how  to  let  God  exercise, 
And  keep  as  ever  mine  the  earthly  prize. 


117 


If  God  's  allowed  to  stretch  his  moral  muscles, 
He  struts  around  and  swings  his  arms  and  bus- 
tles 
And  starts  a  twig  of  goodness  here  and  there, 
And  says,  In  fifteen  centuries  this  will  bear 
A  moral  fig,  for  which  mankind  will  bless  me    ^«  ■ 
And  cry,  how  sad  the  universe  would  be,  less  Me. 
He  is  a  God  that  dearly  loves  to  loafe^ — 
He'll  waste  an  age  reclining  with  an  oaf — 
And  leave  the.  world  to  my  complete  possessing, 
If  I  do  always  what  I'm  now  confessing. 

XLI, 
He  has  in  every  century  or  three 
A  sudden  stroke  of  moral  epilepsy;  ,^ 

And  then  must  belch  and  roll  in  ethical  raving,  ^ 
And  recover  himself  by  giving  the  world  a  saving. 
In  these  wild  times  of  electro-mystical  rabies. 
One  might  suppose  God  liable  to  nab  'is 
Most  mortal  enemies,  sin  and  me,  and  grab  'is 
Poor  earth  and  bear  it  away  from  the  Devil's  grav- 
ing. 
And  he  might,  if  I  then  resisted  his  delirium 
And  applied  my  usual  vice  to  men  to  leery  'em. 
Not  I!     I  know  too  much  to  make  God  stubborn: 
How  is  it  kings  and  politicians  suborn 
The  glowering  mass  when  it's  really  in  a  rage 
And  demanding  a  fifth  of  a  right  in  its  mad  ram- 
page? 
I  taught  'em  the  trick  when  the  world  primarily 

squeaked, 
And   the   first   conception   of   right   from   heaven 

leaked. 
The  rulers  pretend  to  blow  in  the  popular  quarter, 


118 


And  give  'em,  instead  of  a  fifth,  a  tenth  of  a  quar- 
ter. 

A  fortieth  part  of  a  right  they  wisely  concede  'em. 

And  afterwards  forty  times  faster  continue  to  bleed 
'em. 

Now  this  is  the  measure  I  practise  upon  the  Al- 
mighty 

Whenever  his  period  comes  to  be  morally  flighty. 

I  seem,  like  the  college  professor  and  ethical 
preacher,  , 

To  be  on  God's  side,  and  like  them  a  prophetical 
screecher. 

I  further  his  projects  as  ladies  who  visit  the  slums, 

Or  political  scientists  closely  examining  scums. 

God  like  this,  and  says  I'm  a  gentleman  well-bred 
and  learn'd, 

A  personage  safe  to  entrust  with  a  worm  that  has 
turned. 

In  delight  he  forgets  it's  his  duty  to  foam  some- 
what longer, 

And  confesses  he  feels  in  his  legs  and  his  head 
somewhat  stronger. 

I  mistook  you,  he  says  to  me  tenderly,  giving  his 
sceptre, 

The  keys  of  the  earth  I  deliver  to  you,  having 
swept  her 

Of  several  extensive  old  sin-webs  and  even  a 
spider; 

With  your  care  will  this  sweeping  for  twelve  gen- 
erations abide  her. 

Implanting  a  kiss  of  respect  on  my  seal-colored 
cheek, 

He  flies  to  his  damsels,  conflding  mankind  to  my 
beak. 

119 


XLII. 
The  Lord,  Mother  England,  has  recently  dropt  in 

a  fit. 
The  lord  and  the  boodler,  he  says  with  decision, 

must  git. 
Just  humor  him  now  and  apparently  give  'em  their 

conge; 
There's  more  than  one  way  the  mudsill  population 

to  sponge,  eh? 
As  I've  said  several  times.  Uncle  Sam  has  deliv- 
ered the  hint. 
And  no  fiend  can  suspect  that  his  stomach  and 

heart  are  not  fiint. 
Your  Oxford  and  Cambridge  stupidities  old  are  ef- 
fete, 
Found  colleges  new,  to  present  the  new  mass  a 

fresh  teat. 
The  herd  has  discovered  it  owns     a     projection 

called  brain; 
Our  trump  is  to  give  them  a  chance  this  confection 

to  train. 
Then  let  those  who  scale  the  toplofty  Parnassus  of 

science 
Enjoy  luscious  fruits,  for  their  self-sacrifice  and 

appliance. 
Let  feeders  on  those  precious  fruits  be  the  pick  of 

the  mass. 
And  the  rest  will  imagine  the  blessings  stream 

down  on  their  class. 
They'll  willingly,  then,  be  the  slaves  of  their  lucky 

elect — 
We'll  kingship,  and  boodlers,  and  privilege,  then 

resurrect. 


120 


The  elect  will  with  lords  and  monopolists  divvy 
the  pot, 

Thus  connecting  themselves  with  antiquity,  not 
to  say  rot. 

The  people,  in  gratitude-vinegar  softened,  ap- 
peased. 

Will  starve  and  obey,  until  God  with  another  fit's 
seized. 


On  the  brow  of  Spionkop 
Where  the  British  lost  their  top  skins. 
Throw  the  people  down  a  sop, 
Plant  a  Harvard  or  Johns  Hopkins. 

XLIII. 

I'm  now  in  a  word  about  to  state 

The  manner  in  hell  we  educate. 

Our  principal  aim  is  subtlety, 

The  mother  of  mental  adultery. 

We  fill  the  mind  with  so  many  perceptions, 

It  hasn't  a  corner  for  moral  reflections. 

The  more  ways  you  think  on  a  given  subject, 

In  four  ways  you  see  that  life  has  no  object; 

A  little  more  learning  makes  six  of  four. 

The  doctor's  degree  gives  sixteen  more. 

You  get  so  deep  that  you  go  to  sleep, 

And  the  harvest  of  learning  I  briefly  reap. 

A  student  hedged  with  a  million  ifs 

Has  no  occasion  for  earthly  tiffs 

With  an  old  wrong  here  and  a  new  one  there. 

To  him  all  's  equally  black  and  fair. 


121 


His  mind  takes  in  both  good  and  bad, 

The  thing  it  cannot  abide  's  a  fad. 

A  fad  's  whatever  leads  to  action,   . 

And  action  always  leads  to  faction. 

Within  the  All  there  are  no  rooms 

For  faction,  and  the  mind  that  plumes 

Itself  on  taking  in  the  all 

Would  such  a  fallacy  forestall. 

A  faction  's  always  partly  wrong: 

A  subtle  mind  would  be  despised 

To  help  a  cause  in  one  respect 

Deflecting  from  the  absolute. 

It  finds  itself  in  sea  of  bliss 

For  where  it  swims  the  goal  'twill  miss, 

And  ultimately  proudly  drown. 

In  life's  blank  current  undermown. 

It  wisely  will  not  swim  at  all 

Or  waste  its  nobleness  and 'ball, 

Against  the  things  beyond  its  reach 

it  will  not  raise  its  arm  or  preach. 

XLIV. 
Such  bliss,  O  lordly  equal  ^scholar, 
You  feel,  and  neither  fight  nor  holler. 
You  muse  upon  th'  eternal  breast. 
On  earth  you  take  eternal  rest. 
Why  should  you  fight  a  curse  primeval? 
You're  paid  to  study  all  prime  evil. 
You   diagnose   ajnd   synopsize 
And  cures  abhorrently  despise. 
You,  and  the  doctor  theologic,        _      ^^  , 
With  God  all  good  and  curing  lodge,  hie! 
And  in  your  drunk  indifference 


1^? 
122 


Kick  life  beyond  the  funeral  fence.  ^^ 

You  and  the  feed  and  fat  physician 

Hold  vulgar  curing  in  derision. 

If  you  can  cut  a  stomach  out. 

And  see  the  patient  walk  about. 

You  think  you  are  God's  .birds  of  glory^ 

And  can't  abide  the  worms  that  worry 

About  the  scientific  hashes 

Your  knives  administered _  with  gashes. 

Why  should  a  person  want  a  stomach 

If  he  can  be  a  monument 

Of  doctors'  vast  sagacity 

And  flesh's  vast  felicity 

At  being  cut  and  living  through  It, 

And  living  briefly  but  to  rue  it — 

His  soul  intrinsically  awed, 

His  flesh  incinerately  sawed? 

So  you,  with  firm  celestial  poise, 

Float  motionless  aloft, 

Impregnable  to  human  woe, 

If  you  can  score  a  novel  thought 

In  your  elect  philosophy. 

To  struggle  being  ever  wrong. 

What  cause  was  ever  worthy  of 

The  sacrifice  which  fathered  it    . 

When  faction  fought  and  made  it  strong? 

You  are  my  son,  O  learned  man, 
You  comprehend  th'  infernal  plan. 
You  are  the  corporal  of  my  guard 
The  planet's  progress  to  retard. 


123 


XLV. 
You  seem  so  wise  and  willing 
That  people  take  you  at  your  billing; 
O'erawed  by  you  at  cosmos-hulling 
They  can't  believe  that  you  are  gulling. 
And  why  they  don't  detect  your  fraud, 
You  educated  alloyed  God, 
Is  this:  they  think  that  education 
Is  intestinal  divination — 
The  intercourse  of  God  to  males 
Through  chicken  chines  and  cows'   entrails. 
For  in  the  mind  of  Populace 
The  gibbering  priest  has  lost  the  race. 
Into  his  holy  witchcraft  shoes 
The  holy  educated  scholar, 
Fresh  from  his  institution-waller, 
Descends  to  gather  in  his  dues 
And  true  believers  more  confuse. 
The  magic  of  th'  eternal  book — 
It  matters  none  what  book  or  crook — 
Befogs  the  common  ass  forever, 
Nor  will  he  from  his  asshood  sever 
Himself,  while  the  bell-wether  ass, 
Vice-regent  of  fell  nether  ass, 
Derives  his  right  to  be  a  witch 
From  institutions  crass  and  rich. 

XLVI. 
Behold  the  formulaed  professor 
Adore  th'  abnormal  greed  possessor! 
Behold  the  unctuous  personage 


124 


Who  steers  the  college  in  this  age! 

Revolving  round  the  millionaire 

And  begging  humbly  for  his  share 

Of  what  the  thief  unhanged  has  stolen, 

A  fraction  of  his  booty  swollen! 

Of  all  the  boys  who  go  to  school 

To  such  a  millionaire-assuager, 

The  rich  man's  petit  domo-major, 

Who  is  not  knave,  will  be  a  fool. 

But  so  was  mainy  an  ancient  priest 

Who  twisted  entrails  in  the  East. 

The  entrail-knave  will  play  deceiver 

So  long  as  there's  a  pay  retriever — 

So  long  as  people  trust  professors 

And  follow  the  resonant  bray  of  guessers. 

XLVII. 
Thou  scented  attribute  of  print, 
I'll  give  thee  one  strategic  hint. 
Help  not  the  world  to  grow  some  better. 
Do  not  thou  wrench  a  single  fetter. 
But  teach  it  equanimity 
In  witnessing  its  beauty  ravished, 
Defaced  by  vandals  who  could  be 
Restrained  in  their  foul  savagery. 
If  those  on  whom  mankind  has  lavished 
Its  wealth  of  opportunity 
Were  men,  not  creepers  on  the  rich. 

For  having  helped  me  muzzle  Jesus, 
In  hell  will  none  say  that  you  freeze  us. 


125 


XLVIII. 
It  is  not  intended  to  make  people  happy, 
Culture  would  not  do  so  mean  a  thing. 
The  purpose  is  to  mak6  thehi  weak  and  pappy, 
And  to  keep  their  brutish  nos6s  in  the  ring 
That  was  forged  for  them  at  first  by  howling  can- 
non 
When  their  fathers'  noble  lives  were  shot  away, 
When  their  race  v/as  brought  beneath  the  heel  of 

Mammon 
And  to  loving  Jesus  first  was  taught  to  pray. 
Look  upon  the  curious  creatures  of  the  cities 
In  the  lands  that  Jesus  Christ  has  longest  swayed, 
Where  the  colleges  have  sung  their  learned  ditties 
And  professors  been  most  liberally  paid. 
There  you  see  a  bowed  and  creeping  animalcule 
Whom  the  universe  regards  with  blinding  shame, 
Over  whom  the  cultured  rich  and  clammy  'ill  rule 
Till  the  earthworms  penetrate  the  culture  game. 
These  loathsome  crawling  ulcerated  creatures. 
Emanating  from  the  college  culture  spout, 
Are  the  highest  specimens  the  culture  preachers 
Have  been  able  yet  to  sperm  and  bring  about. 
Nor  do  any  of  them  blench  before  the  sewer 
Which  arises  in  their  sacred  lecture  rooms — 
Were  the  slummy  population  slightly  fewer 
There  would  be  less  scrubbing  education  brooms. 
For  the  millionaire  would  harvest  in  less  money 
Had  he  fewer  city  savages  to  rob, 
The  professor's  saintly  life  would  be  less  sunny 
If  the  college  lifted  up  the^  dying  mob. 
Happiness  is  not  the  aim  of  solid  culture: 
It's  to  keep  intact  the  charnel  status  quo, 
While  the  lofty  philanthropic  learned  vulture 
Feeds  upon  the  bleeding  vitals  of  the  low. 

126 


XLIX. 
When  you  want  wrongs  defended  that  would  make 
The  sun  ashamed  to  leave  its  molten  betJ, 
A  gold  mine  droop  its  brazen  eye,      - 
Silver  regret   its  gleaming, 
And  all  diamonds  pityingly  strive 
To  dim  their  jealousy-creating  rays, 
Call  on  political  economists. 
As  soon  as  ploughing  cannon  have 
Distressed  the  crust  on  which  an  untamed  race 
With  haughtiness  confers  with  heaven  and  leads 
Its  independent  life, 
Project  a  glorious  faculty 
Of  these  economists  to  grill  the  land 
And  have  its  generous  undiscriminating  soil 
Heaved  into  banks  of  mountain  magnitude — 
Each  mountain  given  to  a  foreigner— 
And  plant  upon  its  loamy  slopes  the  seeds, 
Which,  after  generations  of  refined 
Attempt,  bear  still  Ricardian  crabs,  that  strike 
Nine-tenths  of  all  their  withered  eaters  dead. 

Under  the  spanking  tutelage  of  these 

Long-armed  ear-flapping  mills  of  wind,  the  native, 

Nevermore  to  be  a  man,  shall  learn 

That  evermove  the  magnet  place 

To  keep  his  eye  is  not  on  heaven,  but  in 

The  pocket  of  the  Zeus 

Who,  in  the  latest  press  reports  from  Heaven — 

No  one  can  vouch  their  truthfulness — has  kicked 

His  father  Kronos  out, 

This  upstart  Zeus  who  is  the  Millionaires — 

Kronos,  poor  dog,  his  credit  lost,  and  Zeus 

Discharged  that  useless  patriarch  from  the  firm;  — 

127 


Who  kicked  Jehovah  out,  and  afterward 
Drove  out  the  angels  with  a  golden  rod, 
And  then  assailed  the  modern  God  himself. 
The  Christian  God  of  mighty  loveliness 
Well-armed  with  lovely  mightiness. 
Reported  to  be  strident,  strong,  omnipotent. 
The  firmanent  and  stars  like  dice  assembled  in 
His  hand,  and  guiding  the  innumerable 
Host  of  thieves  and  things  and  powers  that  de- 
luge the  space — 
And  him  they  beat,  and  kicked  him  out,  and  on 
His  bandy-legged  throne  set  up  their  own 
Abominable  and  stinking  thighs.    In  whose 
Deep  pockets  septic  is  the  execution-cart 
For  all  unmillionair'd  and  common  heads. 
The   secretaries,   scribes   and   messengers, 
Men-of-all-work  and   body-servants. 
Of  these  new  Gods,  are  called  Economists. 

LI. 

Altho  I  have  a  tail  and  horns 

My  devilship  abhors  and  scorns 

These  formless  human  sausage  skins. 

Expositors  of  dirks  and  duns. 

Who  lie  of  this  and  lie  of  that 

To  make  their  lies  connect  and  pat; 

Mincing  human  meat  and  virtues 

To  fill  their  skins  and  jaws  with  cur  chews. 

I'm  not  inexorably  squeamish, 

Nor  in  my  ways  exactly  dreamish, 

But  spider-web  prevaricators 

Who  are  of  poor  men  merry  praters, 

Who  glibly  teach  that  poor  men's  feelings 

Are  tough  as  dried  potato  peelings; 


128 


Who'll  spin  a  yarn  of  theory 
To  earn  their  bloody  fee  for  aye, 
To  prove  a  million  men  may  die 
Quite  justly,  by  just  starving  dry, 
That  one  in  wealth  may  be  a  lubber 
And  philanthropically  blubber — 
If  he  desires — about  the  children 
Of  those  he  killed  to  get  his  billion, 
I  like  not. 

I  like  an  honest  open  fighter 
More  than  a  back  and  secret  smiter. 
An   economic   Pinkerton, 
Hiding  identity  and  gun. 
Ingratiating  his  clammy  carcass 
In  every  corner  small  and  dark  as 
His  sooty  soul,  to  overhear 
Some  evidence  that  matters  here 
Are  right,  and  economically 
What  th'  Almighty  comically 
Intended, — is  for  even  serpent 
Like  me,  so  mean  that  I'd  repent. 

Send  out  at  once  to  the  grim  Transvaal 

Economists,  and  a  trim  trance  doll 

Called  Robinson  Crusoe,  to  show  that  whoso 

Eateth  and  drinketh  enough,  shall  do  so 

No  more  on  the  capitalists'  arrival. 

Who  cometh  to  bury,  or  starve  and  deprave  all. 

LII. 
They're  the  modern  missionary 
Who,  with  treatises  and  sherry, 
Soon'll  induce  the  wandering  Boers 
To  whine  to  capital  on  all  fours. 


129 


If  syllogism,  psychic  fluxion,  . 

Fails,  they'll  have  the  satisfaction 

Of  splitting  with  a  bottle,  hairs 

Which  paid  no  heed  to  Gresham's  prayers. 

Boer  women,  boldly  marshaled, 

Male  attired: — Alfred  Marshall'd, 

Being  with  child  of  some  old  Adam 

Smith,  or  either  Mill  that's  had  'em. 

Would  put  on  petticoats  again 

And  play  the  economic  hen; 

Straightway  their  country's  woes  forgetting 

Would  lay  their  heads,  to  get  a  petting. 

Upon  the  lap  of  Rhodes,  the  Cecil 

Who  tells  them,  leerically,  peace'll 

Arrive  when  they  have  studied  Malthus, 

And  shall  with  him  and  Beit  as  pal  buss. 

LIII. 
When  education  took  the  place  of  God 
A  curious  untold  incident  transpired. 
The  college  presidents,  wanting  something  fine 
Invited  me  officially  to  dine. 
And  with  them,  as  unbiased  clown, 
To  weigh  the  budding  interests  of  the  moon — 
And  incidentally  to  talk  a  little 
About  a  man,  his  wife  and  little  victual. 
I  acquiesced  with  joy,  and  interfused 
Convivial  spirit  in  their  wine  and  wassail. 
I  got  them  drunk  and  mesmerism-locked. 
Then    sowed    the    thistle-thoughts    that    upward 

flocked 
From  my  department  pedagogical, 
Which  forms  the  highest  doctorate  of  hell. 
When  asked  what's  wrong  with  modern  education, 
Reply,  The  Devil  was  at  the  Presidents'  collation. 

130 


LIV. 
I  made  it  a  point,  as  they  lay  there  drunk, 
To  explain  to  them  how  to  make  Freedom  flunk, 
By  saying  that  people  of  high  cultivation 
Would  never  engage  in  a  Freedom  gestation. 
A  man  of  culture  must  not  be  rough 
To  despots,  tho  they  be  exceedingly  gruff. 
The  art  of  light  is  to  live  in  the  dark 
If  you  can't  light  up  with  a  ladylike  spark. 
I  mean,  that  to  say  we  SHALL  be  free, 
Without — "Please,  Sir,"  and  "Pardon  me," 
Would  shock  the  nerves  of  a  learned  fellow 
And  turn  him  anthropological  yellow. 

The  proper  college  should  humbly  strive 
Sweet  reverence  to  keep  alive. 
Reverence  toward  whatever's  above, 
Elegance,  office,  political  shove. 
Wealth,  of  course,  in  its  iron  glove. 
Old  things  dead  and  bathed  in  love 
Which  bathed  on  earth  in  a  bath  of  blood 
And  died  in  a  rain  of  stones  and  mud — 
But  now  ascended  to  the  eternal. 
Forgotten,   reborn,   returned,   supernal. 

LV. 
The  bony  Boer  hath  mere  Old  Testament  morals, 
Which  seemeth  for  trumpery  liberty  to  stimulate 

quarrels. 
Teach  him  to  be  a  neo-Christian  canting, 
To  render  Caesar  all  there  is  but  ranting. 
To  recognize  the  majesty  of  law 
And  feel  that  all  of  it  is  justly  our  law. 
With  care  denying  it  is  simply  Power-law. 


131 


His  brain,  reduced  to  sacred  legal  charcoal, 
Will  not  refuse  to  give  the  regal  shark  all. 
Law,  mounted  on  the  forceful  throne  of  Caesar, 
Destroys  implacably  the  daring  free. 
The  erring  who  impertinently  walk 
Apart   from  governmental   chalk. 

The  Boer  must  learn  the  law  of  non-resistance. 
Which  no  one  honors  with  the  very  least  sense 
Except  as  ether  for  the  weak  we  murder 
And  alabaster  ointment  for  the  sturdier. 

There  is  no  pagan  charm  like  law  and  order. 
You  make  the  law  you  please,  then  order 
The  population  dumbly  down  to  lie 
In  ordered  rows,  and  keep  your  laws  or  die. 

LVI. 
These  darts  of  various  wisdom  well-selected 
Will  guide  you  through  earth,  raping,  hell-inflect- 
ed. 
*When  you've  by  heart  the  blessed  catechism, 
You're  booted  well  to  straddle  any  cataclysm. 

We  now  have  the  phenomenon 

Of  sin  as  Heaven's  automaton. 

The  moralist  looks  at  sin  and  blinks  it. 

The  scientist  smiles  at  sin  and  winks  it. 

The  publicist  welcomes  sin  and  priinks  it, 

The  religionist  mixes  it  and  drinks  it, 

Th'  economist  hospitably  links  it 

To  his  seductive  categories. 

Which  dumbfound  mythological  stories 

Pertaining  to  gods  or  men  or  Sphinx, 

Provided  that  none  of  them  ever  thinks — 


132 


Sin  in  this  company  ages  and  worries — 
No  longer  looks  any  at  sin  and  shrinks  it. 

LVII. 
The  fundamental  principle  of  Hell's 
Construction  still  remains  untold. 
By  dint  of  deep  initiation  in  my  ways 
You're  now  prepared  to  take  a  wild  descent, 
Not  to  the  roof  and  ceiling  of  Below, 
But  to  Hell's  frightful  source  and  undertow. 
Take  not  on  hearsay  what  I  will  repeat, 
But  come  with  me  to  where  th'  foundations  spring 
And  all  things  suddenly  break  off. 
You'll  then  excogitate  why  Heaven's  weak 
And  pottering  to  sin. 

LVin. 
As  one  who  cleans  a  well,  when  th'  rope  divides. 
Falls  straight,  so  dove  they  vertically  down 
Through  many  dizzy  ranges  of  celestial  calves, 
Until  the  Devil  touched  the  brakes. 
They  now  were  at  the  outskirts  of  the  All. 
The  depths  below  revealed  the  dreadful  quality 
Of  infinitely  far  transparency. 
One  looked,  and  saw,  and  ever  farther  saw, 
And  gained  in  fierce  exultancy 
Some  vision  from  beneath  to  draw, 
In  the  wild  reign  of  grandeur  speck  or  flaw, 
To  save  the  roaming  brain  from  going  mad — 
And  in  the  end  saw  nothing. 
'Tis  ghastly,  England  said,  and  yawned. 
Then  pricking  up  her  ears  she  said: 
What  is  this  shaft  upon  which  seems  to  rest 
The  whole  of  everything,  but  which  itself 
On  nothing  stands,  suspended  drearily 
Over  a  dizzy  void? 

133 


I  notice  Hell,  then  Space  containing  worlds, 
Then  Heaven,  all  resting  on  a  broken  beam 
Projecting  downward  in  a  sea  of  naught. 
'Tis  interesting,  quite,  and  breaks  the  laws 
I  learned,  or  thought  I  learned,  at  school. 
Why  does  not  all  collapse  and  fall? 
My  gown  is  rumpled  by  our  flight! 
Can  you  explain  this  miracle? 

LIX. 
The  Devil,  smiling  and  suave,  replied: 
This  short  and  suddenly  deceasing  shaft 
Is  Hell's  ground  principle,  and  on  it  rests 
As  you  remarked,  the  whole  of  everything. 
The  essence  of  it  is  that  those  exhibiting 
More  brains,  are  lifted  up  above  the  rest. 
Thenceforward  to  depress  their  former  friends. 
This  is,  in  truth,  the  inner  substance  of 
Almighty  God, — I  say  it  safely  here — 
He  rests  on  all  and  holds  it  solid  down 
And  never  stirs  himself  to  let  it  up. 
The  last  foundation  of  the  whole,  this  shaft, 
Reclines  on  emptiness. 
Because  this  universal  principle 
And  all  the  curious  things  it  bolsters  up 
Are  likewise  frail  and  void,  sustained  by  wind. 
On  this  slim  tube  not  only  rests  the  Universe 
And  God,  the  memory  of  what  is  gone. 
The  spirits  of  the  dead  and  ashes  of  their  joys, 
But  from  it  I  derive  my  mongrel  power. 

For  were  it  known  by  men  how  feeble  force 
Would  upset  all  and  hell  disperse. 
Would  overthrow  the  fairy  fraudulent  heaven 
To  give  the  earth  and  space  a  life  of  beauty 

1S4 


Not  emanating  from  my  laboratory, 

It  speedily  would  be  done,  for  mortals  would  arise 

To  rend  away  the  leaden  yoke  of  hell. 

Th'  All-Indolent  himself  fears  this, 

For  then  his  power  would  likewise  end. 

Who  plays  and  waits  eternally. 

I  therefore  hold  th'  Almighty  with  a  bit 

And  run  creation  rather  more  than  he. 

I  might  at  any  instant  were  he  cranky. 

Knock  out  his  prop,  and  drop  him  like  a  flunky 

To  spend  his  time  for  ever  in  gyrations. 

He  pays  the  penalty  of  laziness: 

He  would  not  work  to  give  men's  wrongs  redress. 

But  having  destined  'em  to  wickedness 

Kept  'em  pent  up  in  Father  Adam's  gear. 

He  should   have  stopped  sin's  inundations 

And  put  the  universe  on  dry  foundations. 

This  all-upholding  principle  which  I  have  shown 
Adopt    more    carefully,    Miss    Bull,    to    save    your 

throne. 
Your  meek  and  skim-milk  under-class  is  getting 

rabid; 
It  may  demand  the  confiscations  back 
Where  loll  your  rich  on  feathers  they  have  grab- 
bed 

LX. 
As  peoples  are  compound  of  men  and  beasts. 
Those  up  above  that  rob,  and  those  below, 
Whose  heaven-implanted  functions  is  to  work 
And  like  submissive  beasts  be  ever  robbed, 
So   shall   there   be   henceforth   two    kinds   of   na- 
tions : 
The  toiling  sort,  of  nations  lower  class,  despised, 

135 


And  those  interminably  labored  for, 

The  chosen  of  the  God  that  somewhere  fills 

His  nostrils  with  the  contribution  fat 

Of  universities  and  pews. 

And  this  condition  of  the  world  shall  be 

The  work  of  guns  and  thinkers. 

Why  do  the  giant  masses  dumbly  eat 

Their  grass,  while  their  colossal  strength 

Meanders  stricken  through  the  dazzled  dust, 

The  eyeless  freighter  of  the  flogging  world? 

Because,  my  dear,  they  can  not  think. 

But  in  the  reason  why  they  do  not  think. 

Is  well  embalmed  a  mystery 

The  most  incalculably  deep 

That  ever  dyed  the  pale  earth  crimson. 

By  soothing  fetters  of  necessity 

Anchored  to  the  procession  of  the  brutes. 

No  mind  of  European  lower  class 

Could  learn  to  play  the  instrument  of  thought, 

And  so  my  devils  had  that  world  their  way. 

With  shrewdness  deeper  in  the  blighted  States, 

They  sk'im  the  masses  of  their  native  brains 

And   leave   below  the  fermentation   scum 

To  breed  and  breed,  and  toil,  and  toil,  and  spoil. 

While  those  emancipated  from  their  groveling 

A  function  surgical  assume. 

Thenceforth    they    manufacture    fallacies 

To  hold  their  brothers  willing  in  the  pit. 

This  is  the  teeming  mission  I  devolved 

On  universities.    They  cultivate 

The  well-skimmed  mental  muscle  of  the  mass 

With  such  attuned  chicanery. 

That  it  in  very  truth  believes  itself 


136 


Fulfilling  duty  to  its  soul,  mankind, 

Ev'n  to  its  undiscoverable  God, 

When  it  performs  the  mire-stained  destiny 

Of  filthy  beast  and  fouls  the  elsewise  decent 

Earth  by  its  bubonic  tainting  of  tne  air. 

England,  thou  canst  not  trample  common  folk 

Too  much.     They  love  it. 

The  final  skill  is  this: 

Of  all  the  lesser  peoples,  like  the  Boers, 

The  Hindus,  Cubans,  Philippines, 

Take  those  who  are  the  brightest  from  the  rest 

And  give  them  higher  place,  emolument 

And  dignity.     Bribed  by  these  honors  and  estates, 

Let  them  convince   their  trusting  countrymen 

That  foreign  rule,  your  yoke,  is  for  their  good. 

Divide  the  citizens  against  themselves. 

But  with  such  cunning  that  the  many  shall  not 

know 
The  foes  they  harbor  in  their  traitor  few. 
Then  will  the  whole  earth  heave  and  swell 
Upon  hell's  basic  principle. 
LXI. 
When  England  and  the  Devil  returned  to  earth 
They  found  "Bobs"  hunting  for  his  reputation  still 
With  several  hundred  thousand  Weary  Atkinses, 
Among  the  rocks  and  rills  of  Africa. 
The  Devil  was  displeased,  but  didn't  show  it, 
Tho  his  keen  thoughts  ran  thus: 
This  superannuated  blossom 
Is  sure  unfit  to  be  my  main  reliance 
Upon  a  planet  but  half  civilized. 
Until  my  Christian  doctrine  more  pervades 
And  weakens,  a  keener  blade's  required. 

137 


That  blade  is  Sunken  Sam,  and  him  I'll  delegate 

To  be  my  major-general  Devil  here, 

To  act  while  I'm  incorporating  Venus 

Within  th'  Imperial  system  of  my  love. 

I  cannot  spend  a  longer  time  on  earth 

Without  neglecting  business  above. 

I'll  go  at  once  to  Sam  and  dress  him  up. 

He  kissed  his  lady  all  so  lovingly 
She  might  have  doubted  him  begrudgingly. 
Had   she   one   question   of   her   full-orbed   bright- 
ness— 
To  Satan  she  a  bull  of  abhorred  triteness. 

Said  he,  before  he  left  his  frau. 
Your  cup  of  bitterness  is  full: 
Give  up  the  name  of  Johnny  Bull, 
And  call  yourself  Johanna  Cow. 

LXII. 
Sam  was  as  usual  on  a  railroad  train 
Addressing  people  on  prosperity. 
With  mourning  weeds  of  a  suff' ring  island  on 
The  Devil  first  displayed  himself  to  Sam, 
Pleading  attention  in  the  holy  name 
Of  bleeding  franchises  and  tender  game. 
When  Sam's  harmonious  ear  had  learned  the  tune 
The  Devil  conveyed  him  back  to  Washington — 
A  rural  spot  and  national  cemetery 
Where  statesmen  all  good  objects  kill  and  bury, 
And  where  disease,  infectious  from  the  tomb. 
Springs  perfect  product  of  Congressional  womb. 
To  Sam  he  said.  Behind  this  Capitol  rise 
You  can  unrobe  in  safety  from  men's  eyes. 


138 


And  choose  the  colored  suitings  which  you  like. 
In  Hell  the  garment  workers  never  strike, 
And  all  you  wish  shall  be  delivered  tonight. 
To  undertake  a  picture  of  Sam's  joy 
Would  be  inquisitive,  enough  to  say 
The  mission  be  accepted,  and  the  pay. 

LXIII. 
The  flag  he  wound  about  his  tail. 
And  over  that  a  coat  of  mail. 
He  straightened  out  the  Devil's  crook 
And  made  it  like  a  sceptre  look, 
Then  put  it  down  between  his  legs. 
As  boys  play  horse  with  wooden  pegs. 
And  marched  about  and  played  a  drum. 
With  nose  and  fingers  near  his  thumb — 
Tho,  as  the  Devil,  keen  and  mum. 
Upon  his  horns,  an  inch  in  size, 
He  fastened  cunning  stars,  as  lies. 
While  stripes,  to  leave  none  of  the  flag 
Unused,  he  put  upon  his  nose. 
To  represent  the  planet  booze 
He  was  about  to  start  upon 
As  Satan  new,  and  old  Cheap  John. 
His  nose  was  red,  his  people  white — 
With  fear, — the  world  grew  blue  at  sight 
Of  one  so  devilishly  raw 
And  inexperienced.    They  cried 
With  foresight  semi-stupified: 
'The  other  Devil  should  at  least 
Remain  and  tame  this  jungle  beast. 
Before  the  world  is  given  as  ball 
To  this  inebriated  bat.' 

A  Devil  that's  played  his  tricks  ad  nauseam 
Is  less  to  be  feared  than  this  cad  bossy  Sam. 

139 


LXIV. 
How  Sam  behaved  himself  and  served  his  Maker, 
Became  the  most  progressively  aggressive  fakir, 
Achieved  distinction  as  a  moral  cannibal 
In  search  of  little  Romes  to  eat  like  Hannibal, 
The  Devil's  censorship  of  pen 
Forbids  the  story  of  to  men, 
Preferring  they  shall  simply  feel  it 
When  time  has  gone  for  them  to  heal  it. 

But  I  shall  smuggle  on  the  wires, 
At  risk  of  hell's  correction  fires, 
A  brief  report  of  Sam's  first  battle. 
And  how  he  cultivated  Philippine  cattle. 
From  this  you  can  read  further  destiny 
And  learn  how  Sam  became  a  testy  jay. 

LXV. 
There  probably  hasn't  happened  since  the  flood 
More  democratic  instance  of  duplicity, 
Than  Satan  Sam  discovered  he  could  do  illicitly 
As  a  most  artistic  design  in  morals  and  blood. 
He  laid  a  Filipino  on  his  back 
And  said  I  love  you,  whack! 
He  took  an  iron  hammer  that  he  had 
And  struck  the  Filipino  on  his  head. 
That  kind  of  love,  he  softly  said,  's  divine: 
You  shut  your  eyes  and  lo,  you  see  the  stars 
In  naked  costellations  rain  and  shine. 
He  shot  the  Filipino  full  of  holes. 
And  said,  these  apertures  are  for  the  light 
That  streams  from  Congress  through  the  howling 
night 


140 


Upon  the  furious  world,  to  brighten  up  your  souls. 

He  cut  the  Filipino  into  bits, 

Of  which  he  gave  some  to  his  dogs  and  some 

To  politicians,  and  remarked,  there'll  come 

A  day  when  you'll  see  through  these  counterfeits 

Of  present  pain,  and  aggregate  your  bones. 

In  ecstacy  that  where  a  bone  is  lost 

A  book  will  take  its  place,  and  as  a  tube 

Of  hollow  iron,  hold  the  livid  scars 

And  remnants  of  your  jelly  body  up. 

Said   Sam,   ^our   scattered   bones  will   some   time 

stick 
If  you  cement  them  with  our  literature. 
Milton,  par  excellence,  is  certain  cure 
For  those  who  fancy  slavery  a  bore. 
Read  Areopagitica  romantic, 
To  learn  how  foolishly  you  have  been  frantic 
About  the  amputation  of  your  head. 
Fool,  don't  you  know  the  joy  of  being  dead? 
'Most  all  good  men  that  ever  lived  are  dead. 

LXVI. 
Sam's  tail,  however,  is  the  article 
That  needs  attention.     It's  a  particle 
Discolored  with  some  clots,  but  never  mind, 
The  next  convention  will  a  clean  bill  find. 
They  call  his  tail  Republican,  for  just 
The  reason  that  they  call  last  first. 
It  is  an  instance  where  the  tail 
Wags,  not  the  dog,  but  wags  the  Devil. 
A  partisan  Republican's  a  chap 
Who  left  his  conscience  at  Manassas  Gap. 


141 


For  Lincoln  he  hoorayed,  and  for  the  slave, 

But  after  laying  Lincoln  in  the  grave 

He  Oiought  the  progress  of  Creation  finished, 

Sin  dead.  Amen,  and  Satan  punished. 

O,  what  a  resurrection  day  hosanna 

He  sang,  unconscious  of  the  coming  Hanna! 

Jeff  Davis  died  and  let  his  mantle  fall, 

God  save  thee  Mark,  upon  Jeff  Davis  Hanna. 

For  Jeff — and  mark  I  have  no  grudge  agin  him, 

The  nation's  parts  are  cooing  loverly. 

And  many  parts  are  stewing  blubberly; 

The  gladsome  slaves  are  having  freedom's  inning, 

Industrially  happy  all  and  grinning 

From  gallows  tree  and  cherry  telegraph  pole — 

For  Jeff  contented  died — I  say  a 

Fact,  that  in  the  coming  Mark,  Isaiah, 

The  prophet  thundering  after  him  he  saw. 

Who  should  complete  his  work,  and  araw 

The  nation  unto  him  in  slavery. 

For  Davis  is  to  Mark,  as  Baptist  John 

To  Jesus — or  as  prophet  small  to  God. 

This  Jeff  desired  only  to  enslave 

The  nigger,  while  Mark,  ambitiously,  and  bigger, 

Will  put  this  frightened  continent  in  shackles. 

Will  treat  his  beggared  countryman  as  nigger, 

And  keep  him  in  subjection  to  the  trigger. 

LXVII. 
Speaking  as  Devil,  I  remark  aside, 
J.  Davis  Mark  was  hell-heat  tried 
By  me,  and  tempered  with  professional  pride 
To  go  above  and  throttle  Freedom,  and  if 
His  countrymen  were  conscious  of  his  nature 


142 


They'd  send  him  shooting  back  to  me,  a  pleasure 

I  carefully  postpone  a  little  longer. 

Until  no  Yankee  men  can  say,  I'm  free. 

Hanna — the  master  of  Sam's  Satan-tail, 

The  party  once  republican,  now  stale — 

Destined  to  bathe  in  America  in  blood 

Unless  the  people  pitch  him  in  the  flood 

And  ship  him  to  infinity,  is,  I  may  state, 

The  choicest  of  Hell's  monuments  to  date. 

I  made  him  all,  one  afternoon,  myself, 

Out  of  a  bag  of  sneaks  and  Judases; 

Of  nearly  all  the  thieves  that  ever  lived 

I  took  the  cream,  and  sprinkled  in 

The  dust  of  Caesar  and  Napoleon. 

When  he  was  done  they  would  not  let  him  stay  in* 
Hell, 

His  hideousness  made  the  baby  devils  yell. 

Until  America  had  gone  to  proper  rot 

I  had  to  hang  him  out  of  hell,  in  copper  pot. 

The  stench  of  him  was  so  ineffable 

I  sealed  him  up  with  heat  hermetical; 

But  in  America  the  sense  of  smelling 

Was  quite  catarrhally  destroyed  by  sense  of  sell- 
ing, 

And  no  Republican,  leastwise. 

At  Marcus  holds  his  nose  or  shies. 


143 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
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